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UNIVERS[TY  of  CALlFO'iNlA 
AT     . 
LOS  AiNGELES 
LIBRARY 


1/^ 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 


rhe 

GOTHIC  Q 

UEST 

BY 

RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM,  F.A.I.A.,  F.R.G.S. 

2-/336 

^y^ 

NEW   YORK 

THE   BAKER  AND  TAYLOR  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

MDCCCCVII 

^^l  3-^4, 


Copyriglil,  1907,  by 
The  Baker  &  Taylor  Company 

Published,  May,  igo? 


The  Plimpton  Press  Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


>>  ^-/  i.. 


■>VT/^ 


TO    MY 

FATHER   AND    MOTHER 

FROM   WHOM   THROUGH   INHERITANCE   AND 

TRAINING    IS    DERIVED    ALL    THAT 

WHICH  IS  LEAST  UNWORTHY 

OF    THEM    IN    THIS 

VOLUME 


PREFACE 

'  I  ^HE  several  chapters  that  make  up  this  book 
consist  of  fugitive  essays  and  occasional 
addresses,  written  during  the  last  fifteen  years, 
but  prepared  for  different  and  widely  separated 
auditors.  Bearing  as  they  do  on  a  single  question 
—  the  relationship  between  art  and  civilization  — 
and  owing  their  existence  to  impulses  widely 
severed  by  time  and  space,  they  are  not  free  from 
repetitions  which  nevertheless  may  not  be  wholly 
vain,  for  if  a  thing  is  true  it  will  bear  reiteration, 
and  the  excuse  for  this  volume  is  the  author's 
conviction  that  the  ideas  therein  expressed  are 
just  and  true  in  spite  of  an  appearance  of  novelty  at 
this  time,  and  notwithstanding  the  inadequacy  of 
their  presentation. 

Two  of  the  essays  appeared  originally  in  maga- 
zines which  no  longer  exist  —  the  Knight  Errant 
and  Modern  Art.     For  permission  to  reprint  cer- 
S 


PREFACE 

tain  of  the  other  papers,  acknowledgments  are 
due  to  the  Editors  of  the  Catholic  World,  the 
Architectural  Review,  The  Magazine  of  Christian 
Art,  the  Inland  Architect  and  the  Brickbuilder . 

Boston,  Mass. 
Feast  of  St.  Benedict,  1907. 


INTRODUCTION 

TN  the  old  legends  that  tell  us  so  far  more  of 
-*■  the  truths  of  history  than  do  those  chronicles 
that  concern  themselves  with  the  doings  and  death 
of  Kings,  we  read  of  the  mighty  quest,  the  Quest 
of  the  Holy  Grail,  and  how,  year  after  year,  right 
valorous  and  stainless  Knights  out  of  every  land 
in  Christiantie  rode  into  the  four  winds  of  heaven 
searching  for,  and  never  finding,  the  sacred  Chalice 
wherein  St.  Joseph  of  Aramathie  had  gathered  the 
very  Blood  of  God  that  had  been  shed  for  men  on 
Calvary. 

So  the  search  became  a  passion,  and  the  ardour 
thereof  a  consvmiing  flame,  driving  men  from  their 
own  lands,  their  own  kin,  their  own  loves,  out 
into  the  paynim  wildernesses: 

"  Desperate  and  done  with  (so  a  fool  finds  mirth, 
Makes  a  thing  and  then  mars  it,  'till  his  mood 
Changes,  and  off  he  goes!)  within  a  rood  — 

Bog,  clay  and  rubble,  sand  and  stark  black  dearth." 


INTRODUCTION 

And  always  the  quest  failed,  for  the  Grail  had 
been  taken  up  into  heaven,  and  their  eyes,  seared 
with  blown  sand  and  blind  with  long  watching, 
were  to  see  it  never  again,  nor  their  hands  unclasp 
from  bridle  or  sword  or  spear  to  touch  in  reverence 
the  Wonder  of  their  worship.  The  quest  failed, 
as  men  count  failure,  but  it  brought  to  all  brave, 
knightly  adventure  and  the  doing  of  great  deeds 
of  chivalry,  while  over  all  the  world  it  poured  a 
radiance  of  poetry  and  devotion  such  as  men  had 
never  seen  nor  were  to  see  again. 

In  the  Quest  of  the  Grail  is  the  type  of  the 
Gothic  Quest,  which  followed  close  upon  and  was, 
indeed,  its  lawful  heir.  Here,  also,  the  achieve- 
ment was  not  for  them  that  sought,  for  it  was 
none  other  than  the  Beatific  Vision  in  quest  of 
which  they  rode:  Beauty  and  Truth,  absolute 
and  unmingled  of  any  imperfection,  and  these  are 
attributes  of  God,  not  of  man,  and  not  to  be 
perceived  by  eyes  of  flesh  and  blood. 

Yet,  as  before,  the  hopeless  quest  brought  mar- 
vellous  adventure,  and   more,  for   it   established 


INTRODUCTION 

forever  a  type  of  beauty,  a  method  of  creation 
and  the  mark  of  possible  accompHshment  never 
before  achieved.  The  wild  riders  rode  in  vain  in 
their  quest  of  the  unattainable,  but  they  brought 
back  a  wonderful  thing  in  its  place,  none  other 
indeed  than  the  mystical  knowledge  of  Art,  what 
it  is,  and  what  it  does,  and  what  it  signifies. 
Therefore,  the  quest  was  not  in  vain,  for  Christian 
Art  was  the  guerdon  gained. 

This  was  the  Gothic  Quest,  and  if  we  think  of 
it  as  an  historical  episode,  dead  long  since  with 
chivalry  and  faith  and  the  fear  of  God,  we  think 
foolishly.  The  Quest  is  never  at  an  end  for  the 
world  is  never  at  pause.  Paynim  and  infidel  roll 
up  in  surging  ranks,  break,  ebb,  and  are  sucked 
back  into  their  night,  or,  as  happens  now  and 
again,  sweep  on  in  victory  over  fields  won  from 
them  once  by  the  Knights  of  the  Gothic  Quest, 
and  all  is  to  do  again.  There  is  neither  rest  nor 
pause,  neither  final  defeat,  nor  definite  victory: 

..."  We  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 
Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  fight 
When  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 


INTRODUCTION 

Well,  the  fight  is  good  and  the  prize  ennobles 
all,  but  tlie  fight  is  never  ending,  for  true  beauty 
is  too  wonderful  a  thing  to  be  lightly  held  and 
without  challenge.  The  quest  to-day  is  the  Gothic 
Quest  in  a  varied  guise,  as  that  was  the  Quest  of 
the  Grail  under  another  form.  Set  in  wide  deso- 
lation, rampired  about  with  scarp  and  intrench- 
ment,  looms  the  Dark  Tower  of  Childe  Roland's 
pilgrimage: 

"The  round,  squat  turret,  blind  as  the  fool's 
heart"  the  citadel  of  ugliness,  emptiness,  and 
pretence,  the  first  barrier  that  balks  all  those  that 
course  on  the  Gothic  Quest;  and  yet  not  one 
draws  rein,  nor  rides  aside,  but  with  imsheathed 
sword  rises  in  his  stirrups  and  takes  upon  his  lips 
the  words  of  Childe  Roland: 

"Not  hear?  when  noise  was  everywhere!  it  tolled 
Increasing  like  a  bell.     Names  in  my  ears 
Of  all  the  lost  adventurers  my  peers, — 
How  such  an  one  was  strong,  and  such  was  bold, 
And  such  was  fortunate,  yet  each  of  old 
Lost,  lost!  one  moment  knelled  the  woe  of  years." 


INTRODUCTION 

"There  they  stood,  ranged  along  the  hill-sides,  met 
To  view  the  last  of  me,  a  living  frame 
For  one  more  picture!  in  a  sheet  of  flame 
I  saw  them  and  I  knew  them  all.     And  yet 
Dauntless  the  slug-horn  to  my  lips  I  set 
And  blew.  '  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower 


II 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 

PAGE 

On  the  Restoration  of  Idealism  ....  17 

Concerning  Architectural  Style  ....  ^3 

The  Gothic  Ascendency      ......  53 

Meeting -Houses  or  Churches 79 

The    Development    of    Ecclesiastical  Archi- 
tecture IN  England 117 

The    Development  of    Ecclesiastical  Archi- 
tecture  IN  America         139 

On  the  Building  of  Churches      .      .  167 

The  Interior  Decoration  of  Churches     .  209 
The     Contemporary     Architecture     ov      the 

Roman  Catholic  Church 233 

One  of  the  Lost  Arts 263 

The    Case    against    the    Ecole    des    Beaux 

Arts 297 

Architectural  Education  in  the  United  States  323 


13 


ON    THE    RESTORATION    OF 
IDEALISM 


THE    GOTHIC   QUEST 

ON  THE  RESTORATION  OF  IDEALISM 

\    S  the  tendencies  established  during  the  six- 
^     teenth  century  have  prolonged  themselves 
to  their  logical  conclusion,  many  and  wonderful 
things    have    follov^fed    therefrom,    and    of    such 
nature  that  we  may  well  believe  the  zealous  en- 
thusiasts of  that  troubled  time,  could  they  have 
seen  as  in  a  vision  the  things  that  were  to  follow 
from  their  labours,  would  have  faltered  in  their 
A    iconoclasm,  confounded  by  the  sight  of  the  un- 
V     grateful  issues  of  the  reforms  they  held  so  admi- 
'rj    rable. 

xj  It  is  easy  to  start  a  movement;  it  is  hard  to 
foresee  its  consequences;  it  is  impossible  to  control 
its  progress. 

To   the  bold  spirits  of   the   Renaissance   and 
Reformation,  the  revolution  wrought  at  their  hands 
17 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

seemed,  indeed,  the  birth  of  the  new  life,  and  of 
the  occasional  honesty  of  their  motives,  of  the 
needfulness  of  certain  of  their  reforms,  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  to  doubt.  Yet  we  who  are  reaping 
the  whirlwind  can  only  ask  if  the  benefits  we  have 
received  have  been  commensurate  with  the  un- 
foreseen evils  which  have  followed  from  their 
action.  Men  proposed,  but  the  disposition  was 
not  in  their  hands,  therefore  the  event  was  other 
than  they  had  foreseen. 

The  impulse  of  the  fifteenth  century  was,  at 
heart,  the  impulse  towards  individualism.  Whether 
we  consider  the  new  spirit  in  theology,  in  the  lib- 
eral arts,  in  sociology,  we  find  the  motive  the 
same.  For  a  time  it  was  indeed  a  new  life,  or 
rather  the  next  step  in  a  life  already  noble;  by  its 
action  that  which  we  call  Mediaevahsm  took  on  a 
new  aspect,  and  one  of  exceeding  beauty  and 
graciousness;  the  early  Renaissance  was  the  very 
flowering  thereof.  Could  the  development  have 
ended  then,  or  could  it  have  continued  under 
stern  and  rigid  control,  it  is  impossible  to  indicate 


RESTORATION    OF   IDEALISM 

the  golden  age  which  might  have  followed.  Un- 
happily, nothing  of  this  kind  was  to  be,  and  the 
fifteenth  century  showed  at  one  and  the  same  time 
the  last  vestiges  of  the  splendid  springtime  of  the 
new  life,  the  first  signs  of  the  untimely  winter. 

If  we  inquire  curiously  into  the  genesis  of  things, 
we  shall  find  the  beginnings  of  those  conditions 
that  now  surround  us  far  back  in  centuries  that 
we  have  forgotten.  Conditions  do  not  happen; 
they  follow  inevitably  one  from  another,  and  we 
can  find  the  qualities  of  the  nineteenth  century 
already  determined  in  the  sixteenth  century,  even 
as  Alexander  Hamilton  foresaw  the  nature  of  our 
present  political  disaster,  finding  it  bound  to  follow 
inexorably  from  the  popular  theories  he  so  power- 
fully opposed.  Yet  none  listened  to  him,  as  none 
listened  to  those  who,  in  the  early  Renaissance, 
foretold  the  lamentable  results  destined  to  follow 
from  the  newly  established  tendencies.  The  good 
that  lay  in  the  system  of  the  new  regime,  the  good 
that  was  sure  to  come  and  that  the  world  so  much 
needed,  blinded  men's  eyes  to  the  strange  and  com- 
19 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

plex  misfortunes  certain  to  follow  when  the  control 
had  fallen  into  new  and  incompetent  hands. 

So  it  befell  that  the  change  from  the  spirit  of 
the  fourteenth  century  to  that  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury came  softly  and  unnoticed,  and  a  new  era 
had  dawned  on  the  world. 

From  then  the  history  of  the  world  has  been 
largely  a  record  of  just  principles  driven  to  excess; 
of  liberty  changing  into  license;  of  license  changing 
into  anarchy;  of  revolution  and  counter  revolution; 
and  through  it  all  has  run  the  slow  but  determined 
success  of  the  less  worthy  cause,  until  at  last  the 
old  tendencies  have  won  their  goal,  and  life  has 
become  a  riot  of  individualism. 

In  England  the  climax  of  the  new  system  came 
with  the  close  of  the  last  century.  It  is  generally 
admitted  that  at  that  time  England  had  sunk  to 
quite  the  lowest  stage  of  civilization  that  had  been 
her  fortune  for  very  many  centuries.  The  revul- 
sion of  feeling  came  slowly  but  surely,  and  day 
by  day  in  certain  directions  she  is  regaining  the 
position  that  she  had  utterly  lost.  The  labour 
20 


RESTORATION    OF   IDEALISM 

legislation,  the  Oxford  Movement,  Preraphaelitism 
and  the  new  school  of  idealists,  the  new  literature, 
the  growing  conservatism,  are  all  evidences  of  the 
great  reaction.  With  us  the  rise  of  the  tide  of  mate- 
rialism still  continues,  but  we  are  not  without  signs 
that  even  now  it  is  nearly  at  the  flood,  and  eager 
eyes  are  watching  for  the  ebb  that  is  almost  at  hand. 

To  the  complete  dominance  of  individualism 
over  this  country  is  due  the  fact  that,  with  us,  the 
different  views  of  the  liberal  arts  which  have  been 
so  popular  during  the  last  half  of  the  century  are 
being  forced  to  their  final  limit.  Realism  in  the 
art  of  letters,  in  the  art  of  painting,  in  dramatic 
art,  lawless  individualism  in  architecture,  find 
perhaps  their  strongest  defenders  in  America. 
The  condition  is  acknowledged,  but  it  is  not  due, 
as  some  would  say,  to  the  fact  that  we  are,  as  a 
nation,  far  in  advance  of  other  peoples,  but  to 
the  fact  that  we  lag  behind  certain  of  them,  for 
that  as  yet  the  revulsion  of  feeling  against  individ- 
uaHsm  has  hardly  begun. 

We  have  so  blind  a  faith  in  our  theory  of  evolu- 

21 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

tion,  and  in  our  own  manifest  destiny,  that  we  are 
apt  carelessly  to  assume  that  our  last  achievement 
comes  by  virtue  of  our  inevitable  progress,  and 
must  mark  another  stage  in  world-development. 
In  a  measure  this  is  true,  but  the  progress  is,  let 
us  hope,  only  the  last  stage  of  a  false,  or  rather, 
ill-directed  tendency,  marking  the  end  of  an 
epoch  that  can  claim  little  honour. 

Realism,  naturalism,  impressionism,  eclecticism, 
are  really  but  the  results  of  the  powerful  influence 
of  the  contemporary  spirit  on  art,  exactly  as  agnos- 
ticism and  rationalism  are  its  consequences  in 
another  direction,  as  democracy  and  the  com- 
petitive system  and  mammonism  are  its  results  in 
yet  other  fields.  The  influence  is  dominant,  and, 
it  might  almost  seem,  invincible,  were  it  not  for 
the  quiet  testimony  of  recent  history. 

It  is  impossible  to  regard  existing  conditions 
frankly  and  firmly  and  hold  this  belief;  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  acknowledge  that  the  result  of  the 
system  established  during  the  sixteenth  century 
has   been   the   practical   destruction   of  idealism, 


RESTORATION    OF    IDEALISM 

the  bringing  into  discredit  of  the  imagination,  the 
forgetting  of  spiritual  things,  the  dishonouring  of 
man's  noblest  faculties,  the  exaltation  of  those 
that,  if  not  less  worthy,  are  more  limited  in  their 
scope,  more  material  in  their  potency. 

The  general  tendency  of  society  for  the  last  two 
centuries  and  more  has  been  away  from  the 
spiritual  and  imaginative  towards  the  mental,  the 
intellectual,  and  now,  at  last,  towards  the  hope- 
lessly material.  The  hero  worship  of  ancient 
peoples  as  shown  in  their  various  governments, 
with  its  spirit  of  personal  devotion  and  allegiance, 
has  given  place  to  defiant  democracy.  The  social 
system  has  changed  from  the  ancient  regime  where 
men  were  not  ashamed  to  acknowledge  the  supe- 
riority of  others  than  themselves,  where  a  noble  and 
honourable  lineage  gave  right  of  precedence,  to  a 
perilous  condition  of  fictitious  social  equality,  itself 
founded  on  a  most  abstract  theory,  and  failing  of 
its  desired  result  through  making  inevitable  a 
rigid  inequality,  the  tests  of  which  are  both 
irrational  and  sordid. 

23 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

The  conditions  of  life  itself  which  once  were 
accepted  as  means  to  a  clearly  visible  end,  beauty 
of  living  and  environment,  have  come  to  be  only 
such  as  aid  in  the  struggle  for  life  that  has  now 
grown  so  fmplacable,  in  the  acquisition  of  useless 
wealth,  and  in  the  furthering  of  purely  material 
and  enervating  bodily  comfort.  Religion,  once 
the  impulse  of  ideahsm,  the  very  abiding-place  of 
abstract  beauty,  the  unconquered,  immeasurable 
realm  of  the  imagination,  has,  among  many 
nations,  degenerated  through  Protestantism  to 
Puritanism,  and  thus  to  agnosticism  and  final 
materialism,  by  successive  stages  throwing  off 
some  beautiful  ideal,  some  tradition  more  nearly 
true  than  history,  until  at  last,  expressed  in  the 
mathematical  forms  of  a  totally  different  mani- 
festation of  the  human  mind,  it  stands  discredited 
and  condemned,  a  mere  phantasm  of  its  former 
self. 

That  there  were  evils  under  these  dead  systems 
is,  of  course,  true,  but  the  revolt  has  been  not  so 
much  against  these  abuses  as  mistakenly  against 
24 


RESTORATION    OF    IDEALISM 

the  principles  themselves;  and  therefore,  while  the 
abuses  are,  if  anything,  more  gross  beneath  the 
new  regime,  we  cannot  keep  in  sight  an  ideal,  true 
in  itself  even  if  misused,  but  only  a  false  theory 
of  life  that  is  fast  proving  its  incompetency. 

The  lamentable  results  of  this  radical  change 
are  acknowledged  by  a  few  men  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life,  —  acknowledged,  and  therefore  as- 
sailed. As  yet,  however,  it  seems  very  hard  for 
anyone,  no  matter  how  clearly  he  may  understand 
the  catastrophe  that  has  overtaken  that  phase  of 
life  with  which  he  is  most  familiar,  to  realize  that 
an  equal  fall  has  occurred  elsewhere;  or,  seeing 
this,  to  understand  that  the  radical  cause  is  one 
and  the  same,  whether  it  manifest  itself  in  religion, 
in  the  liberal  arts,  in  politics,  or  in  social  life. 
Nevertheless,  Dante  Rossetti  fought  in  painting 
the  same  disease  that  Cardinal  Newman  fought 
in  religion,  that  Wagner  fought  in  music,  that 
Henry  Irving  fought  in  dramatic  art,  that  Cardinal 
Manning  fought  in  economics.  There  have  been, 
indeed,  at  least  three  men  who  have  realized  that 
25 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  decadence  visible  in  so  many  places  is  due  to 
one  and  the  same  cause,  and  that  cause  the  for- 
saking of  idealism  and  the  discrediting  of  the 
imagination  through  the  immoderate  following  of 
individualism;  however  much  we  may  disagree 
with  certain  details  of  their  proffered  reforms,  we 
can  never  forget  that  John  Ruskin,  Richard 
Wagner,  and  William  Morris  have  seen  beyond 
the  accidents  of  existing  conditions;  beyond  the 
manifest  reasons  for  these  conditions,  even  to  the 
root  of  the  great  decadence  itself. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  consider  here  the 
various  manifestations  of  this  decadence;  it  is 
enough  to  call  to  mind  its  results  on  the  liberal 
arts  where  it  is,  perhaps,  most  clearly  and  popu- 
larly visible.  Certainly  the  spectacle  can  scarcely 
be  considered  comely  to  look  upon,  or  gracious, 
whether  we  regard  the  curious  conclusions  of 
realism  in  the  arts  of  painting,  the  drama  and 
fiction,  where  there  is  still  some  pretence  of  jus- 
tifiable production,  or  the  total  collapse  that  has 
taken  place  elsewhere,  as,  for  example,  in  the 
26 


RESTORATION    OF    IDEALISM 

industrial  arts.  Were  there  nothing  else  to  see 
but  the  popular  productions  of  the  present  idolized 
system,  the  justification  of  the  optimist  would  be 
hard  to  find;  but  already  many  have  turned  with 
repugnance  from  the  manifest  grossness  and  ma- 
terialism of  current  conditions,  seeking  diligently  ■ 
for  some  clearer  path,  for  the  place,  as  it  were, 
where  the  roads  diverged  and  the  false  following 
began.  And  these  men  are  called  reactionists. 
Perhaps,  like  the  word  "  Gothic,"  the  name  given 
in  scorn  may  in  a  little  time  be  held  in  honour 
and  reverence.  What  is  it,  indeed,  this  "reac- 
tionism,"  but  the  natural  return  of  men  who  find 
the  current  theories  and  principles  to  be  in  reality 
ephemeral  and  superficial,  the  results  of  the  vain 
speculations  of  an  incompetent  age,  to  the  times 
when  the  respective  provinces  of  the  intellect  and 
imagination  were  more  clearly  understood.  Of 
course  there  is  danger  in  such  return  of  affectation, 
of  exoticism,  on  the  one  hand,  of  cold  formalism 
and  archaeological  exactness  on  the  other;  but  these 
evil  tendencies  are  in  themselves  only  the  outcome 
27 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  the  influence  of  a  false  and  dominant  system 
on  a  movement  in  itself  just  and  honourable. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  present  tendencies 
are  of  such  a  nature  that  effort  is  useless  until 
they  have  vi^orked  out  their  inevitable  destiny, 
and  have  wrought  the  universal  ruin  which  has 
always  followed  in  the  past  from  the  dominance 
of  similar  conditions.  This  might  have  been  said 
with  greater  show  of  justice  half  a  century  ago, 
before  the  movement  for  the  restoration  of  idealism 
had  become  as  powerful  and  united  as  is  now  the 
case.  At  that  time  the  night  was  hardly  lifting 
from  England,  but  in  the  light  of  the  wonderful 
dawn  that  has  risen  over  this  fortunate  country, 
other  less  favoured  nations,  although  they  may 
still  be  complaining  beneath  the  weight  of  un- 
licensed individualism,  have  no  right  to  predict 
only  ultimate  ruin  and  chaos.  A  century  that 
has  seen  in  one  country  such  a  group  of  prophets 
of  the  New  Life  as  Cardinal  Newman  and  Cardinal 
Manning,  Matthew  Arnold,  John  Ruskin,  Dante 
Rossetti,    Edward    Burne-Jones,    Walter    Crane, 

28 


RESTORATION    OF    IDEALISM 

George  Frederic  Watts,  William  Morris,  John  D. 
Sedding,  Henry  Irving,  Robert  Browning,  and 
Walter  Pater,  as  well  as  a  multitude  of  younger 
men  as  yet  less  famous,  cannot  be  a  century  that 
knows  alone  the  decay  which  leads  to  inevitable 
death.  And  if  the  revulsion  of  feeling  has  been 
less  widespread  in  certain  other  countries,  the 
cause  has  nowhere  been  without  its  prophets, 
standing  alone,  it  may  be,  as  Richard  Wagner,  in 
some  sense  the  greatest  prophet  of  all,  stood, 
defiant  through  the  courage  of  absolute  conviction. 
There  is  no  longer  rational  cause  for  discour- 
agement; dismay  and  surrender  may  have  seemed 
justifiable  in  the  eighteenth  century,  but  they  can 
seem  so  no  longer.  The  new  Reformation,  the 
second  Renaissance,  the  Restoration,  it  might 
justly  be  called,  is  firmly  established,  and  it  can 
neither  retreat  nor  collapse.  The  two  movements 
will  develop  side  by  side,  the  old  system  advancing 
steadily,  step  by  step,  and  with  apparent  triumph, 
confidant  of  ultimate  dominion,  to  its  logical  cul- 
mination; the  "Restoration"  moving  more  quietly 
29 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

by  its  side,  gathering  strength  and  power,  until  at 
last,  when  that  chaos  has  come  which  is  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum  of  current  individuahsm,  the 
restored  system  of  ideaHsm  shall  quietly  take  its 
place,  to  build  on  the  wide  ruins  of  a  mistaken 
civilization  a  new  life  more  in  harmony  with  law 
and  justice. 


30 


CONCERNING  ARCHITECTURAL 
STYLE 


CONCERNING  ARCHITECTURAL  STYLE 

A  RECRUDESCENCE  of  religion,  a  re- 
assertion  of  the  finality  of  the  CathoHc 
Faith  and  the  indestructibihty  of  the  visible 
Church,  formed  no  part  of  the  simple  and  logical 
scheme  of  those  who,  wearied  of  the  superficial  and 
chaotic  vagaries  of  nineteenth-century  architecture, 
promulgated  the  new  gospel  according  to  Paris. 
Toleration  for  a  dying  superstition  and  a  kindly 
humouring  of  its  moribund  whimsies  were,  in- 
deed, characteristic  of  this  new  evangel  in  the 
place  where  it  was  first  delivered  to  the  saints, 
and  then  and  now  concessions  were  and  are 
made  to  that  purblind  conservatism  that  balks 
the  rotund  and  robustious  "Renaissance,"  plead- 
ing for  some  earlier  and  less  classical  —  or  shall 
we  say  pagan  —  mode  of  expression.  In  the 
33 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

service  of  this  dissolving  but  still  operative  super- 
stition, the  architectural  artifice  that  flourished 
in  Europe,  full-blown  and  plausible,  when  at 
last  the  principles  of  Christian  civilization  had 
gone  down  in  cataclysmic  defeat  before  the  bar- 
barism of  the  heathen  revival,  was  laid  aside, 
and  recourse  was  had  to  a  more  primitive  type, 
the  style  developed  in  France  in  the  eleventh 
tentury  by  the  Christian  leaders  of  a  burgeon- 
ing civilization,  before  it  had  reached  or  even 
approached  its  flood-tide  of  glory.  ^With  the 
transferring  to  the  western  continent  of  this  new 
revelation  of  the  sole  and  singular  basis  of  civil- 
ized art,  the  tolerance  of  its  Gallic  protoevan- 
gelists  is  abandoned,  and,  more  French  than  the 
French  themselves,  our  own  prophets  proclaim 
the  sufficiency  of  pagan  forms  for  all  and  sun- 
dry the  fields  of  architectural  activity. 

This    whole-hearted    and    enthusiastic    devo- 
tion  is   not   without   embarrassing  concomitants. 
Instinctively    it    was    felt    that    there    was    some 
curious    reason    that    made    somewhat    ludicrous 
34 


ARCHITECTURAL    STYLE 

a  village  church  of  the  "Episcopal"  persuasion, 
couched  in  the  terms  employed  by  the  house 
of  Borgia  for  expressing  its  notable  and  original 
alliance  between  Hottentot  morals,  cave-dweller 
cruelty,  and  the  Catholic  Faith.  This  persist- 
ent instinct  drove  the  advocates  of  architectural 
uniformity  on  the  lines  of  neo-paganism  to  a 
general  denial  of  the  possible  endurance  in  the 
scheme  of  existence  of  any  organization  or  im- 
pulse that  would  not  submit  itself  to  such  ex- 
pression. Most  unfortunately,  however,  this 
organization  and  this  impulse  proceeded  to  in- 
crease in  strength  by  leaps  and  bounds.  The 
demand  for  churches  became  unparalleled  in 
its  clamorousness,  for  by  some  whim  of  chance 
the  Church  refused  to  die,  or  even  to  yield  in 
the  least  to  "Ethical  Culture"  and  "natural 
religion."  In  England  and  in  America  ap- 
peared a  most  illogical  reaction  from  free  thought 
to  "mediaeval"  dogma,  from  a  liberalizing  Prot- 
estantism to  a  most  illiberal  Catholicism.  Like 
a  tidal  wave  came  the  stupendous  return  to  the 
35 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

liturgies  and  the  ceremonies  and  ritual  of  the 
"dark  ages";  monasticism,  that  "perfect  mark 
of  ignorance  and  superstition,"  was  restored, 
and  instantly  took  on  the  appearance  of  a  gen- 
uine revolution.  Into  the  offices  of  architects 
poured  demands  for  ecclesiastical  designs;  ca- 
thedrals, churches,  monasteries,  convents,  church 
schools,  and,  most  ominous  of  all,  for  secular 
buildings  the  style  of  which  was  prescribed, 
and  that  style  was  —  Gothic! 

It  was  necessary  that  something  should  be 
done  to  stay  this  tide  of  reaction  and  to  retain 
in  the  hands  of  the  "regular,"  that  is,  the  Clas- 
sical practitioners,  the  commissions  that  would 
otherwise  go  to  the  most  irregular  fellows,  who 
not  only  lacked  the  hall-mark  of  the  schools, 
but,  as  well,  denied  the  primal  necessity  of  their 
cachit,  and  defied  all  law  and  order  by  juggling 
with  the  dead  bones  of  a  barbarous,  discredited, 
and  uncivilized  epoch.  With  the  invaluable 
and  unanimous  assistance  of  the  local  archi- 
tectural schools,  a  renewed  effort  wSs  made  to 
36 


ARCHITECTURAL   STYLE 

beat  back  the  absurd  revolt  of  the  dead  who 
declined  to  remain  so.  The  effort  failed  com- 
pletely, and  now,  it  seems,  a  new  scheme  is  to 
be  tried,  no  less,  indeed,  than  a  propaganda 
for  the  instillation  into  the  public  mind  of  the 
doctrine  that,  after  all,  there  is  no  reason  why 
the  style  of  "enlightenment"  should  not  be  quite 
as  apposite  for  the  service  of  God  as  the  service 
of  Mammon,  and  that  no  form  of  organized 
religion  that  finds  itself  unable  to  accept  the 
new  mode  of  structural  and  artistic  expression 
has  any  reason  for  further  existence,  but  is,  in- 
stead, a  ghost  out  of  the  dead  past,  vacant  of 
any  living  and  contemporary  soul. 

It  would  seem  that  there  was  some  chance 
of  success  for  a  propaganda  such  as  this.  On 
the  one  hand  is  the  Roman  Church,  which  did 
for  several  centuries  hold  by  the  style  now  fashion- 
able once  more  because  of  the  growing  rapproche- 
ment between  the  twentieth  and  the  sixteenth 
centuries;  on  the  other  is  the  newest  of  all 
denominations,  which  cannot  in  reason  express 
37 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

itself  through  forms  that  are  the  emanation  of 
superstition  and  priest-craft,  —  Rome  and  Chris- 
tian Science,  the  oldest  and  the  most  modern, 
the  two  extremes.  If  these  can  be  won  over 
may  they  not  prove  an  upper  and  a  nether  mill- 
stone, grinding  into  dust  all  that  lies  between? 
And  the  latter  has  yielded  already.  Really, 
the  case  is  not  so  bad. 

Now,  merely  as  an  essay  in  empiricism,  and 
with  no  possible  hope  of  meeting  successfully 
the  cultured,  scholarly,  and  highly  trained  ad- 
vocates of  neo-neo-paganism,  I  desire  to  pos- 
tulate three  aphorisms. 

Number  one.  Classical  architecture  need  not 
be  used  as  the  visible  expression  of  Cliristian 
religion  or  Christian  civilization. 

Number  two.  Classical  architecture  should  not 
be  used  as  the  visible  expression  of  Christian 
religion  or  Christian  civilization. 

Number  three.     Classical  architecture  must  not 
be   used   as   the   visible   expression   of   Christian 
rehgion  or  Christian  civilization. 
38 


ARCHITECTURAL    STYLE 

Number  one.  The  assumption  is  made  that 
a  hard  line  divides  pagan  from  Christian  art. 
This  is  true,  but  the  Hne  of  demarkation  lies 
elsewhere  than  is  currently  assumed.  It  Js  plaus- 
ibly alleged,  and  we  carelessly  accept  the  allega- 
tion, that  Classical  art  is  civiTized,~~based  on 
sound  and  eternal  laws,  refined,  scholarly,  scien- 
tific, and  couched  in  terms  of  absolute  beauty, 
while  mediaeval  art  is  crude,  founded  on  indi- 
vidual impulse,  whim  and  fantasy;  barbaric, 
unlearned,  illogical,  and  unbeautiful.  Now  it 
seems  to  me  that  this  discrimination  is  inexact. 
It  is  not  a  question  between  the  art  of  barbarism 
and  the  art  of  civilization,  but  between  the  art 
of  paganism  and  the  art  of  Christianity.  Were 
the  hypotheses  of  the  Classicists  true,  then  in- 
deed it  might  be  necessary  that  we  should  forsake 
barbarism  for  civilization;  but  if  the  two  arts 
be  analyzed,  I  think  it  will  appear  that  every 
sound  law  that  underlies  the  art  of  Greece,  of 
Rome  and  of  the  Renaissance  is  to  be  found 
in  the  art  of  the  Middle  Ages,  while  these  same 
39 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

laws  have  been  further  perfected  thereunder  and 
supplemented  by  others  of  equal  verity  and  supe- 
rior refinement.     I  think  it  will  also  appear  that 
the  civilization  of  Mediaevalism  was  more  nearly 
perfect  than  that  of  Athens,  far  nobler  than  that 
of  Rome,  and  separated  by  the  entire  diameter 
of   being   from   the   repulsive   barbarism   of   the 
High,  or  Pagan  Renaissance,  and  that  this  dififer- 
ence  is  quite  apparent  in  the  art  of  the  several 
,  periods. )  Further,   I  feel  quite  certain   that  the 
^       refinement,    the    scholasticism    and    the    science 
1       manifested  in   Gothic  art  find  their  rivals  only 

\ in   the   art   of   Greece,   while   they   match   them 

there  and  beat  them  on  their  own  ground.  Fi- 
nally, I  submit  that  the  absolute  beauty  of  Gothic 
line,  mouldings,  details,  ornament,  proportion, 
mass,  and  composition  have  no  parallel  in  any 
form  of  artistic  expression  yet  devised  by  man, 
while  the  greatest  qualities  of  all  architecture 
—  structural  organization,  development,  and  the 
co-ordination  of  parts  —  are  found  in  their  per- 
fection only  in  the  Christian  art  of  the  Middle 
40 


ARCHITECTURAL   STYLE 

Ages.  \  For  these  reasons  I  hold  that  Classical 
architecture  need  not  be  used  as  the  visible  ex- 
fjression  of  Christian  religion  and  Christian 
civilization. 

Number  two.  Is  art  a  language  or  is  it  a  form 
of  amusement?  If  the  former,  then  each  epoch 
of  the  world  develops  its  own  proper  form  of 
expression.  I  assume,  —  though  it  is  pure  as- 
sumption, of  course,  —  that  this  is  a  statement 
of  the  function  of  art.  Are  we  a  Christian  or 
a  pagan  nation  ?  I  assume,  —  though  it  is  pure 
assumption,  of  course,  and  I  grant  the  manifold 
contemporary  evidences  of  the  exact  contrary, 
—  that  we  may  still  claim  to  be  the  former.  From 
the  day  when  St.  Benedict  made  possible,  under 
God,  a  logical  development  of  Christian  society, 
this  development  continued  without  let  or  hin- 
drance) until  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
at  which  time  art  had  been  wholly  re-cast  on 
Christian  lines  ^  losing  nothing  of  its  eternal 
principles  in  the  process  —  and  had  become, 
and  continued  to  remain  for  nearly  two  centuries 
41 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

thereafto",  die  full,  perfect,  and  supreme  exponent 
of  Christian  society.  The  vital  principle  of 
ffagaral  art  transmigrated  into  the  new  body 
the  Church  had  brought  into  being,  and  so  came 
Christian  art,  the  same  in  essence,  infinitely 
diverse  in  outward  seining.  The  laws  held; 
the  forms  only  we^e  new,  and  they  were  forms 
that  belonged  to  the  new  epoch  of  development 
with  which  pagan  forms  had,  and  could  have, 
nothing  whatevo-  to  do. 

Then  came  the  Renaissance,  which,  by  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  in  Italy,  had 
become  simply  a  brazen  affectation  of  all  the 
vices  and  evils  of  paganism;  to  express  this  new 
spirit  in  the  world  recourse  was  had  quite  properly 
to  the  very  forms  of  pagan  art,  and  in  another 
hundred  years  almost  the  last  vestige  of  Chris- 
tian art  had  disappeared,  keeping  pace  quite 
closdy  with  the  vanishing  of  Christian  civiliza- 
tion. Xlhitside  Italy,  and  particulariy  in  England, 
which  was  slow  to  accept  the  Renaissance,  the 
old  traditions  lingered  long,  and  there  they  wctc 
42 


ARCHITECTURAL    STYLE 

not  destro}-ed  until  the  year  1540,  when  Henry 
\111  finally  succeeded  in  crushing  the  last  op- 
position to  paganism,  and  prepared  the  way  for 
the  great  debacle  that  befell  the  moment  he  was 
out  of  the  way  and  his  son  assumed  to  reign  in 
his  stead.    ^ 

Now  the  question  is,  are  we  in  America  the 
spiritual  successors  of  the  Medici,  the  Bof^gia, 
the  sixteenth-centun-  despotisms  of  Europe  and 
the  Inquisition,  together  with  all  the  oiha-  mani- 
festations of  the  Pagan  Renai^ance,  a*  do  we 
hark  back  to  the_mighty  glcaies  of  Church  and 
State  in  the  thirteenth  century  in  Italy.  France, 
Germany,  and  England?  -In  a  word,  are  we 
pagan  or  Christian  ?  If  the  kner,  then  we  should 
found  our  art  on  the  unalterable  laws  c^  all  axt 
and  base  our  forms  on  those  devek^)ed  by  Chris- 
tianity to  express  Christianity;  if  the  icsmsx,  then 
there  is  no  mere  to  be  said,  except  this:  if  aodstx 
is  pagan,  the  Church  is  not;  if  Prote^antism 
is  willing  to  confess  itself  the  successKx-  of  the 
Medici   i~t   ±~   'Bttz.:..    '-.   hi?    z    -erff::   richt 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

to  adopt  their  form  of  art,  but  the  Catholic  Church, 
Roman  or  AngHcan,  or  American,  cannot  do  this 
if  it  would;  it  has  sloughed  off  the  paganism 
that  scurfed  its  body  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries,  together  with  the  resultant  Calvinism 
of  the  seventeenth,  and  it  stands  now  boldly 
and  explicitly  Christian.  It  is  debarred  abso- 
lutely from  any  further  masquerading  in  the 
vestments  of  paganism,  Classical  or  Renaissance, 
as  the  case  may  be.  For  these  reasons  I  hold 
that  Classical  architecture  should  not  be  used  as 
the  visible  expression  of  Christian  religion  and 
Christian  civilization. 

Number  three.  The  revolution  we  call  the 
Renaissance  began  in  the  thirteenth  century.  / 
At  first  it  was  simply  an  intensifying  of  the  spirit 
of  creative  Christianity.  The  "Babylonian  Cap- 
tivity" of  the  Popes  at  Avignon,  followed  as  it 
was  by  the  "Great  Schism,"  struck  at  the  heart 
of  the  Church,  which  was  Christianity  organized, 
operative,  and  supreme.  The  fall  of  Constanti- 
nople, the  acquisition  of  classical  literature  by 
44 


ARCHITECTURAL   STYLE 

laymen,  and  the  discovery  of  the  wonders  of 
classical  art-remains  started  a  fad  for  paganism 
which  became  singularly  popular,  very  largely 
by  reason  of  the  fact  that  pagan  morals  were 
found  to  be  somewhat  more  attractive  than  those 
formerly  inculcated  by  the  Church.  A  new 
period  of  dark  ages  began,  the  dark  ages  of  morals. 
The  Church,  weakened  and  helpless,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  paganizers,  and  from  that  moment 
the  doom  of  Christian  civilization  was  sealed. 
The  early  Renaissance,  which  was  Christian 
in  spirit  and  beneficent,  gave  place  to  the  high 
Renaissance  which  was  pagan  and  malefic.  Hell 
burst  loose  over  all  Europe,  and  during  its  dom- 
inance was  developed,  among  other  things,  that 
architectural  style  which,  modified  and  elaborated 
by  Paris,  is  now  offered  us  for  universal  accept- 
ance. The  years  which  saw  it  come  into  being 
were  precisely  the  most  immoral,  abandoned, 
and  profligate  years  recorded  in  the  history  of 
Europe  since  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
If  art  is  a  language  and  not  a  form  of  amusement, 
45 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

then  there  must  be  some  kinship  between  a  given 
type  of  art  and  the  epoch  during  which  it  came 
into  being.  This  being  so,  Classical  architecture, 
so  far  as  it  is  classical  and  not  universal,  so  far 
as  it  differs  in  its  forms  from  "Gothic"  archi- 
tecture, is  bound  hand  and  foot  to  the  paganism 
either  of  Greece,  or  Rome,  or  of  the  Renaissance. 
St.  Peter's  is  Alexander  VI  and  Leo  X  in  concrete 
form,  and  any  building  modelled  thereon  ex- 
presses the  debauchery,  the  bloodthirstiness 
and  the  grinning  hypocrisy  of  the  time  of  which, 
equally  with  its  architecture,  they  were  the  in- 
carnation. On  the  one  hand,  the  Medici,  the 
Borgia,  Macchiavelli,  the  Inquisition;  on  the 
other,  St.  Bernard,  St.  Francis,  Dante,  Giotto, 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  St.  Louis,  Stephen  Lang- 
ton,  St,  Thomas  a  Becket.  Paganism  or  Chris- 
tianity: which  shall  it  be?  For  these  reasons, 
I  hold  that  Classical  architecture  must  not  be 
used  as  the  visible  expression  of  Christian  reli- 
gion or  Christian  civilization. 
Here  are  three  theses  that  may  be  debated, 
46 


ARCHITECTURAL   STYLE 

certainly  with  propriety,  possibly  with  profit. 
Is  the  Classical  form  of  art  any  higher  than  the 
Christian  ?  Is  art  a  language  or  a  form  of  amuse- 
ment? Are  we  the  heirs  of  the  Pagan  Renais- 
sance, or  of  the  Great  Thousand  Years  of 
Christianity? 

The  advocates  of  Classical  forms  deserve  very 
surely  the  highest  praise  for  their  consistent 
effort  to  lay  down  a  body  of  sound  laws  for  the 
development  of  architectural  style,  and  they 
are  the  only  men  who,  rationally  organized,  are 
trying  to  do  this  in  America  to-day.  They  have 
behind  them  schools  which  are  equally  well 
organized,  and  teach,  clearly  and  successfully, 
these  very  laws.  They  are  wrong,  however, 
I  feel  very  sure,  in  holding  that  the  forms  are 
inseparable  from  the  laws;  in  looking  on  these 
forms  as  the  only  ones  possessing  pure  beauty, 
in  stigmatizing  the  Christian  style  as  deficient 
in  beauty  and  its  advocates  as  reactionaries; 
in  failing  to  grasp  the  essential  nature  of  the 
epoch  that  brought  their  favourite  forms  into 
47 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

being;  in  ignoring  the  inevitable  connotation 
of  paganism  and  evil  in  these  forms;  and  in 
maintaining  that  organized  Christianity  may 
appropriately  express  itself  through  the  show 
of  organized  paganism. 

It  is  probably  true  that  a  large  proportion  of 
contemporary  human  life,  particularly  in  France 
and  in  the  United  States,  is  more  closely  akin 
to  the  terrible  sixteenth  century  than  to  the  Chris- 
tian era  that  preceded  it;  for  all  these  domains 
of  human  energy  the  forms  of  the  Renaissance 
remain  the  only  fit  mode  of  expression.  On  the 
other  hand  there  is  much  that  revolts  against 
the  unexampled  immorality,  the  savage  cruelty, 
the  crushing  absolutism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
insane  rebellion  against  all  law,  order,  and 
authority  on  the  other,  which  are  the  marks 
of  the  High  Renaissance.  Education,  mercy, 
and  charity,  the  arts,  science,  and  letters,  a 
large  section  of  domestic  life,  all  these  are  out 
of  touch  with  the  era  of  the  Medici  and  the  Borgia, 
and  its  concomitant,  the  epoch  of  Luther,  Calvin, 


ARCHITECTURAL   STYLE 

Cranmer,  and  Knox.  Above  all  rests  the  Church, 
Catholic,  apostolic,  and  universal,  unhappily 
divided  now,  but,  in  the  Providence  of  God, 
we  may  hope,  soon  to  be  reunited.  Purged  of 
the  deadly  disease  that  once  threatened  its  very 
existence,  the  Church  now  stands  serene,  con- 
fident, penitent,  and  restored  to  its  ancient  estate. 
Were  it  to  return  to  the  artistic  modes  and  forms 
that  once  marked  its  degradation  it  would  be  guilty 
of  false  pretences,  unfaithful,  deceitful;  it  would 
brand  itself  a  liar.  ^Not  in  the  name  of  art,  but 
in  the  Name  of  God,  must  the  Church  accept  and 
employ  the  art  of  Christianity,  refusing  all  others; 
so  will  she  stand  frankly  and  explicitly  before  the 
world,  using  art  as  a  language  and  as  a 
mighty  missionary  influence,  winning  back  the 
world  from  heathenism,  eradicating  slowly 
but  surely  the  last  of  the  tares  sown  by  the 
Enemy  in  fields  once  won  and  forever  dedicated 
to  God. 

Art  is  a  language,  not  a  form  of  amusement, 
and   therefore   we   cannot   play  with   its   highest 
49 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

and  noblest  manifestation,  which  is  architecture, 
but  follow  it  with  prayer  and  fasting,  acknowl- 
edging ourselves  as  artists,  but  more  than  this, 
as  guardians  and  builders  of  Christian  civili- 
zation. 


SO 


THE  GOTHIC  ASCENDENCY 


THE  GOTHIC  ASCENDENCY 

"IT  THAT,  in  exact  terms,  do  we  mean  by 
'  this  phrase,  "The  Gothic  Ascendency?" 
We  realize,  of  course,  that  after  a  certain  date  a 
particular  form  of  architectural  design  came  most 
conspicuously  into  being,  in  a  few  years  super- 
seding the  rough,  round-arched  style  that  had 
halted  along  with  rather  indeterminate  results 
through  several  centuries.  We  know  that  this 
new  and  radical  mode  of  building  became  popular 
almost  instantly,  quickly  discredited  all  that  had 
gone  before,  was  accepted  by  all  the  nations  of 
Europe,  and  for  three  centuries  was  the  only 
recognized  mode  of  architectural  expression, 
changing  constantly,  it  is  true,  developing  always, 
taking  on  varied  qualities  and  aspects  in  accord- 
ance with  the  ethnic  traditions  and  racial  temper 
53 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  the  several  peoples  that  accepted  it,  yet  re- 
maining always  a  definite  style  in  spite  of  its 
mutations,  an  easily  recognized  type,  whether  it 
is  reflected  in  the  green  Venetian  lagoons  or  in 
the  ripples  of  the  English  rivers;  whether  it  domi- 
nates the  level  fields  of  the  He  de  France  or  be- 
comes one  with  the  crags  of  the  Rhine. 

Now  what  does  this  signify,  this  sudden  and 
victorious  advent  of  a  style  apparently  without 

traceable  ancestry?;  for  in  its  structrual  methods, 

i.  _ 

its  schemes  of  composition,  the  development  of 
its  detail,  the  genius  of  its  ornamentation,  it  is 
utterly  unlike  anything  that  had  gone  before, 
confessing  in  its  ancestry  far  less  kinship  with  the 
Norman,  Romanesque,  and  Lombard  it  had  dis- 
comfited and  destroyed,  than  was  so  easily  trace- 
able between  Greek  and  Egyptian,  Byzantine 
and  Roman,  for  example. 

Hitherto  each  recognized  new  style  had  been 
but  a  development,  an  elaboration  of  some  im- 
mediate prototype,  tinged  by  new  blood  perhaps, 
but  essentially  the  same.     Even  the  adoption  of 
54 


THE    GOTHIC   ASCENDENCY 

the  arch  by  the  Romans  could  not  wipe  out  alto- 
gether the  memory  of  Hellenism,  nor  could  Orien- 
talism in  its  turn  wholly  emancipate  the  builders 
of  Byzantium. 

Here,  however,  we  are  confronted  by  a  new 
condition,  a  style  that,  when  it  had  fully  found 
itself,  was  utterly  without  psychological  or  struc- 
tural antecedents.  Fifty  years  served  to  blot  out 
the  last  trace  of  Roman  memories  in  what  we 
call  Norman  work,  and  from  then  onward  it  was 
like  the  visualizing  of  a  dream.  A  new  dispensa- 
tion had  taken  form  and  shape. 

I  repeat,  what  does  this  mean  ?  With  what  are 
we  dealing  when  we  confront  the  Gothic  as- 
cendency? A  dialect  of  an  assumed  architectural 
language  which  is  actually  an  entity?  A  local  patois 
tinged  by  some  subtle  re-disposition  of  blood- 
corpuscles  ?  A  merely  inevitable  development  from  a 
new  fad  in  masonry  construction  ?  A  whim,  a  fancy, 
a  fluctuant  fashion  like  our  own  flares  for  Richard- 
sonian,  Queen  Anne,  Colonial,  and  the  latest  gospel 
according  to  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts  ? 
55 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Not  one  of  any  of  these  things,  I  think,  though 
we  have  the  highest  scholastic  authority  for  hold- 
ing that  the  development  of  the  ribbed  and  pointed 
vault  was  the  beginning  and  the  ending  of  Gothic. 
Under  correction  I  must  maintain  that  the  sys- 
tem of  construction  is  an  accessory  to  the  style, 
and  that  what  we  call  Gothic  architecture  could 
and  did  exist  when  the  vault  was  unthought  of. 
Until  more  convincing  arguments  are  offered,  I 
for  one  must  hold  that  Gothic  architecture,  as  we 
call  it,  is  something  greater  than  a  structural  inci- 
dent. It  is  the  trumpet  blast  of  an  awakening 
world,  a  proclamation  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven 
that  man  has  found  himself,  that  the  years  of 
probation  are  accomplished,  the  dark  ages  ex- 
tinguished in  the  glory  of  self-knowledge;  in  a 
word,  that  Christianity  has  triumphed  over 
paganism,  the  Catholic  faith  over  heresy.  Man, 
redeemed,  emancipated,  assured  of  salvation,  has 
attained  his  majority. 

These  revelations  of  the  supreme  dignity  of 
human  nature  through  its  contact  with  conscious 
56 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENCY 


divinity  had  occurred  before,j  in  varying  degrees, 
for  as  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  says:  "God  has  never 
left  Himself  without  a  v^^itness."  In  Egypt,  as 
one  realizes  at  Karnak;  in  Hellas  as  the  Acropolis 
testifies;  in  Byzantium,  as  witness  Sta.  Sophia  and 
the  Venetian  San  Marco  and  the  Capella  Pala- 
tina  in  Palermo;  in  China  when  Buddhism  came 
to  lighten  the  great  world  of  the  far  East.  To 
me,  one  and  all,  however,  they  lack  the  splendid 
comprehensiveness,  the  utter  emancipation,  of 
that  immutable  and  supremely  exalted  style  that 
marked  the  majority  of  Christian  Europe,  the 
cathedrals,  churches,  and  monasteries,  the  castles, 
courts,  colleges,  and  dwellings  that  glorify  Europe 
from  Sicily  to  Scotland,  from  Finisterre  to  the 
frontiers  of  Muscovy. 

"Gothic"  as  we  call  this  great  manifestation, 
for  lack  of  a  better  word,  is  less  a  method  of 
construction  than  it  is  a  mental  attitude,  the 
visualizing  of  a  spiritual  impulse.  Masonry  vaults 
explain  neither  the  awful  majesty  of  Chartres  nor 
the  fretted  towers  of  Rouen;  concentration  of 
57 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

loads  and  the  grounding  of  thrusts  never  brought 
into  existence  the  arcades  of  the  Venetian  palaces 
or  the  glimmering  ceilings  of  Oxford,  Westminster, 
Windsor,  and  Sherborne.  Far  back  of  structural 
expedients  lay  a  determining  force,  a  driving  energy, 
and  the  embodiment  of  these,  the  incarnation,  was 
the  so-called  Gothic  art,  or,  since  for  the  time 
building  was  the  chief  of  the  arts,  the  favoured 
\  method  of  artistic  expression,  Gothic  architecture. 
In  a  way,  we  may,  if  we  like,  describe  Hellenic 
architecture  as  a  style  of  building  developed  from 
the  principle  of  dead  loads.  It  was  this,  of  course, 
but  I  think  we  shall  agree  that  really  it  was  some- 
thing beside  this.  It  was  far  more  the  ultimate 
refinement  of  every  line,  every  proportion,  every 
curve,  than  it  was  the  apotheosis  of  trabeate  con- 
struction. Still  more  was  it  the  embodiment  of 
supreme  calm,  self-restraint,  and  immitigable  lawJ 
Most  of  all,  and  this  I  conceive  to  be  its  inmost 
essence,  was  it  the  expression  through  another  of 
the  arts,  of  exactly  the  same  spiritual  quality 
that  voiced  itself  in  the  Antigone  and  the  (Edipus 
58 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENCY 

of  Sophokles,  the  Victory  of  Samothrake  and  the 
metopes  of  the  Parthenon. 

We  can  no  more  reduce  Gothic  architecture  to 
the  terms  of  a  structural  formula  than  we  can 
dismiss  Greek  architecture  with  a  word  on  tra- 
beate  construction;  the  stone  beams  and  the  dead 
loads  are  there  in  the  one  case,  and  [the  pointed 
vaults  with  their  supporting  ribs  and  resisting 
buttresses  in  the  other,  but  these  are  no  more  the 
essence  of  the  two  styles  than  the  leit-motifs  are 
all  of  Wagner,  or  verbal  involutions  the  basic 
principles  of  Browning  and  George  Meredith 
and  Gilbert  Chesterton. 

Perhaps  after  all  it  is  the  eternal  imbroglio  of 
definitions.  This  very  clear  and  unmistakable 
style  we  are  considering  is  misrepresented  by  the 
most  undescriptive  and  misleading  epithet  imagi- 
nable. "Gothic"  as  a  title  is  perfectly  and  ex- 
quisitely meaningless.  The  last  of  the  Goths 
had  been  in  his  unquiet  grave  centuries  before 
the  style  that  bears  his  name  was  even  thought  of. 
Gothic  architecture  rose  and  was  developed  among 
59 


/ 

THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

peoples  dwelling  hundreds  of  miles  from  the 
habitat  of  the  Gothic  tribes,  and  in  whose  veins 
not  a  drop  of  Goth  blood  ever  flowed.  It  was  a 
style  which  was  not  racial  in  any  respect;  it  had 
its  manifestations  in  Italy,  Spain,  France,  Ger- 
many, the  Low  Countries  and  England.^,  It  was 
the  manifestation  of  an  epoch,  not  of  blood,  of 
the  zeii  geist,  not  of  a  clan. 

Pass  eastward,  over  the  Empire  of  Rome,  the 
marches  of  the  barbarian  Goths,  the  dominions 
of  Alexander,  the  principalities  of  Hindustan; 
when  you  arrive  at  the  farthest  East  you  will  find 
on  the  shore  of  the  Pacific  a  style  that,  though  it 
differs  from  Gothic  in  its  visible  form  as  the  East 
differs  from  the  West,  is  yet  in  its  essence  one 
with  the  so-called  Gothic,  the  wonderful  archi- 
tectural creations  of  China  and  Korea  and  Japan. 
Each  expresses  the  same  things:  the  triumph  of  a 
great  religious  ideal,  the  manifestation  of  fully 
achieved  self-knowledge,  the  rising  of  a  people 
out  of  barbarism,  the  development  of  the  splendid 
virtues  of  heroism,  sacrifice,  chivalry,  and  worship.   \ 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENCY 

The  Buddhist  temples  of  Japan  are  outwardly  at 
the  antipodes  from  Amiens  and  Gloucester  cathe- 
drals, yet  both  show  one  thing,  perfect  freedom 
for  self-expression,  and  this  the  best  and  the 
highest  of  the  self  that  demands  utterance. 
/  Hence  the  misnomer  "  Gothic, "  first  given  in 
scorn  by  the  Pharisees  of  the  so-called  Renais- 
sance, is  hardly  worth  fighting  for,  and  yet,  like  so 
many  epithets  applied  first  in  contempt,  it  has 
gradually  become  a  synonym  of  honour,  and/for 
several  generations  it  has  stood  for  a  very  definite 
thing,  —  the  whole  body  of  art  that  was  the  visible 
expression  of  the  genius  of  Christian  civilization 
from  the  eleventh  to  the  sixteenth  centuries^^It 
has  stood  for  life  palpitating  with  action,  for 
emotional  richness  and  complexity,  for  the  ideals 
of  honour,  duty,  courage,  adventure,  heroism, 
chivalry;  above  all  for  a  dominating  and  con- 
trolling religious  sense  and  for  the  supremacy  of 
an  undivided  Church  and  all  it  signified.     | 

Because  of  this  it  seems  to  me  most  ill-advised 
to  endeavour  to  restrict  the  title  to  one  of  the 
6i 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

component  parts  of  the  great  mediaeval  product. 
The  system  of  construction  evolved  during  the 
space  of  a  century  in  the  He  de  France  was  un- 
questionably, as  Professor  Moore  has  shown,  the 
greatest  single  achievement  in  architecture  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  I  believe  it  was  more  than 
this;  no  less  indeed  than  one  of  the  most  marvel- 
lous products  of  the  mind  of  man  in  all  times,  all 
countries,  all  categories.  ,'  It  was  absolute  architec- 
ture  raised  to  the  level  of  eternal  law.  ]  Egypt, 
Greece,  Rome,  the  Renaissance,  the  Ecole  des 
Beaux  Arts,  never  developed  anything  which  in 
comparison  was  more  than  elementary.  Byzan- 
tium might  have  done  so  had  her  day  lasted 
a  little  longer,  but  the  night  came  down,  and  it 
was  many  centuries  before  the  North  continued 
the  work  of  the  frontiers  of  the  Orient.  The 
monks  and  masons  of  France  simply  harnessed 
the  forces  of  nature,  bound  them  in  subjection  to 
almost  superhuman  intelligence,  formulated  there- 
from a  scientific  proposition  in  absolute  law,  and 
then  vivified  the  whole  magical  fabric  with  the 
62 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENC^ 

r  breath  of  supreme  beauty  and  the  inspirai 
Divine  worship.    / 

j  Such  a  triumph  as  this  demands  a  distinct 
designation,  but  it  seems  to  me  rather  curious  to 
adopt  as  a  title  for  the  most  dehcate,  scientific, 
beautiful,  even  metaphysical  product  of  the  mind 
of  man,  the  name  of  a  tribe  of  savages,  a  name 
still  linked  with  that  of  the  Vandals  as  represent- 
ing the  quintessence  of  raw,  sodden  barbarism.  _7 
1  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  admit  that  but  for 
the  accident  of  connotation  the  term  applies  quite 
as  inelegantly  to  the  whole  world-spirit  of  me- 
diaeval Christianity  of  which  the  consiunmate 
structural  product  of  the  He  de  France  was  one 
manifestation.  For  my  own  part,  I  wish  the  term 
"Gothic" — i.e.,  savage  —  might  be  forever  dis- 
carded, or  applied  exclusively  to  the  architecture 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  where  it  belongs,  and 
that  we  could  all  agree  to  call  the  style  we  are 
considering  the  Christian  style,  while  the  mode 
of  building,  development,  and  composition  per- 
fected in  France  in  the  thirteenth  century  should 
63 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

be  known  by  some  title  the  discovery  of  which 
is  beyond  my  powers,  but  which  would  indicate 
at  once  that  it  was  the  most  perfect  mode  of  build- 
ing ever  devised  by  man. 

I  put  above  it,  however,  the  style  itself,  the 
Christian  style,  for  it  is  greater  than  any  of  its 
parts.  Those  who  have  studied  the  French  mode 
of  building,  the  living  organism  that  stands  second 
only  to  the  divine  creation  of  man,  have  been  so 
overwhelmed  with  its  delicacy  and  its  majesty 
that  they  are  inclined  to  test  all  things  by  its 
standards,  rejecting  all  that  falls  short.  This  is 
hardly  surprising,  but  the  fact  remains  that  by  so 
doing  they  are  driven  to  condemn  much  that, 
inadequate  to  this  extent,  is  yet  equally  worthy 
of  honour,  equally  expressive  of  human  genius 
and  aspiration,  equally  and  sometimes  more  per- 
fectly beautiful  and  sublime. 

The  French  mode  of  construction  was  not  at 
first  understood  in  England,  and  even  at  last,  in 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  only  par- 
tially. In  Italy,  Spain,  and  Germany  it  was  not 
64 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENCY 

understood  at  all,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  this  fact,  and 
while  we  must  award  to  France  the  glory  of  ab- 
solute perfection,  we  must  remember  that,  though 
it  seems  a  paradox,  the  passion  for  perfection  that 
fails  is  sometimes  more  noble  than  the  passion  for 
perfection  that  achieves. 

Greece  falls  in  the  latter  category:  she  set  her 
footsteps  towards  a  height  of  architectural  attain- 
ment, and  arrived,  but  it  was  not  upon  a  dizzy 
altitude.  There  was  perfection  though  on  a 
comparatively  low  level  of  achievement.  France 
raised  her  eyes  to  the  highest  peak  visible  below 
the  clouds  —  and  stood  at  last  on  the  summit  of 
possible  glory.  England  strove  to  rise  into  the 
very  clouds  themselves,  to  leave  the  earth  with 
its  hindering  limitations.  She  failed,  but  the 
splendour  of  her  ambition,  the  inspiration  of  her 
ideal,  remain  vital  forever,  and  in  her  failure  is 
something  of  wonder  and  glory  more  appealing 
than  the  consummate  victory  of  France. 
j  I  call  it  the  Christian  style  of  architecture,  then, 
first  because  it  is  Christian  in  its  impulse;  second 
65 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

because  it  was  the  product  of  Catholic  civilization, 
/"'and  of  that  alone.     It  was  Christian  in  its  impulse 
\.    because  it  was  freedom  itself,  liberty  subject  to 
law  (which  is  the  only  liberty);  because  it  was 
bound  by  no  code  of  hindering  precedents,  but 
gave   the   fullest   scope   for   personal   expression; 
because  it  was  full  of  the  love  of  nature,  the  passion 
for  perfect  beauty,  and,  above  all,  the  recognition 
of  God,  the  consciousness  of  the  Redemption,  and 
the  overriding  impulse  towards  Christian  service 
and    divine    worship^   It    was    the    product    of 
Christianity,  for  the  civilization  that  used  it  as  a 
/means  of  expression  was  a  Christian  civilization,  y 
Paganism  had  fallen,  and  civilization  had  been 
involved  in  its  ruin.     For  centuries  Christianity 
worked  slowly,  sometimes  blindly,  to  build  another 
world  on  the  wreck  of  the  old.     As  the  builders  of 
the  dark  ages  patched  together  the  fragments  of 
shattered  temples,  raising  fallen  columns,  insert- 
ing riven  cornices  and  capitals  in  rude  walls  of 
lumbering  brick  and  stone,  so  did  the  Church 
work  for  a  time  with  the  makeshift  spoil  of  a  ruined 
66 


THE    GOTHIC   ASCENDENCY 

era.  Little  by  little  both  began  to  do  creative 
work,  still  on  the  lines  of  pagan  remains,  —  no 
new  ideas  as  yet,  monastic  conserving  of  perish- 
able treasures  against  the  spoiling  of  barbarians. 
Then,  almost  in  a  day,  an  awakening,  a  sudden 
consciousness  that  the  night  was  over,  and  the 
dawn  at  hand.  Out  of  its  dusky  cloisters,  as  from 
the  ark,  issued  that  which  was  saved  from  the 
universal  destruction;  man  had  rested  and  re- 
freshed himself,  and  there  was  a  new  day  for 
labour. 

The  monasteries  became  active  agents,  no 
longer  passive  conservators.  There  was  good 
fighting  in  driving  back  invading  savages  instead 
of  retreating  before  them,  there  was  the  service 
of  God  in  converting  and  civilizing  them  when 
once  they  were  conquered.  Christ  was  King,  and 
His  service  was  good,  therefore  came  the  Crusades 
with  all  they  meant  of  self-sacrifice  and  heroism, 
and,  later,  when  their  first  glory  had  waned,  of 
adventure,  excitement,  wealth,  glory.  The  world 
opened  out  like  a  transformation  scene;  new  lands, 
67 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

peoples,  ideas  were  revealed.  Man  was  like  a 
child  in  a  garden  of  enchantment,  and  like  a  child 
he  frequently  broke  the  wonderful  new  toys  that 
came  to  his  hand. 

Then  came  the  age  of  production;  everyone 
was  busy,  either  in  doing  or  working.  Wealth 
increased  amazingly;  on  the  continent  men  drew 
together  into  cities;  civic  and  diocesan  pride  came 
into  existence,  and  Bishop  and  commune  raised 
the  wonderful  cathedrals,  half  to  the  glory  of  God,  J 
half  to  the  glory  of  their  own  special  dwelling- 
places.  In  England  the  monasteries  remained 
supreme,  and  the  cathedrals  were  for  a  time  a 
secondary  consideration.  When  the  Benedictines, 
who  had  sown  the  land  with  sumptuous  abbeys, 
fell  away  from  their  best  ideals,  the  Cistercian 
reformation  came  to  instil  new  life  into  the  insti- 
tution of  monachism.  This  was  followed  by 
the  Augustinians,  they  by  the  friars;  Bishops  and 
Princes  on  the  continent,  monks  and  friars  in 
England  led  the  van  of  civilization. 

At  one  time  unbridled  fighting  and  the  Black 
68 


THE    GOTHIC   ASCENDENCY 

Death  threatened  to  bring  the  epoch  to  an  end  in 
disaster,  but  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century  saw 
a  marvellous  recovery,  and  the  fifteenth  century 
began  in  splendour,  with  a  glory  that  waned  almost 
instantly,  for  Christian  civilization  was  disin- 
tegrating, becoming  paganized  under  the  malig- 
nant influence  of  the  Renaissance,  and  the  root  of 
faith  and  sincerity  had  withered. 

But  three  and  a  half  centuries  had  taken  their 
place  in  history,  as  marking  an  era  of  achievement 
that  had  had  no  parallel  since  the  days  of  Perikles. 

This  is  the  epoch  of  the  so-called  "Gothic" 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting,  and  of  more 
than  this.  Not  alone  was  it  the  time  of  mag- 
nificent activity,  manly  fighting,  chivalrous  ideals, 
passionate  faith,  —  it  takes  in  and  includes  all 
that  almost  unimaginable  period  called  the  Early 
Renaissance.  Again  by  our  clumsy  nomenclature 
we  have  fallen  into  the  habit  of  counting  this 
period  as  solely  the  beginning  of  a  new  era.  More 
than  this  was  it  the  end  of  an  epoch,  for  the  vitaliz- 
ing spirit  in  the  Early  Renaissance  was  the  spirit 
69 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  Mediaevalism.  All  the  art  of  this  time  was 
the  final  and  supreme  flowering  of  Mediaevalism 
itself.  '■  In  the  art  of  the  Early  Renaissance,  Chris- 
tian civilization  came  full  tide,  but  the  poison  of 
neo- paganism  was  working;  men  and  manners 
were  degenerating,  had  degenerated  indeed,  so 
that  we  are  confronted  by  the  phenomenon  of 
supreme  art  in  a  period  of  utter  moral  obliquity. 
The  new  power  was  stronger  than  the  old;  the 
crested  wave  of  perfect  achievement  broke,  re- 
treated, was  sucked  back  into  the  abysses  of  the 
sea,  and  the  waves  that  followed  were  foul  with  the 
mud  and  slime  of  the  tide  of  the  High  or  Classical 
Renaissance.^' 

From  this  moment  architecture  began  to  de- 
cline, foreshowing  so  the  imminent  collapse  of  all 
true  art  of  every  kind.  It  was  not  so  much  that 
pagan  details  became  the  vogue,  utterly  super- 
seding the  exquisite  products  of  Mediaevalism;  it 
was  not  even  that  this  "classical"  detail  was  used 
uninteUigently,  barbarously,  without  any  regard 
to  its  original  function,  and  was,  at  the  same  time, 
70 


THE    GOTHIC   ASCENDENCY 

coarsened,  vulgarized,  degraded,  step  by  step 
until  it  became  the  unspeakable  "rococo"  and 
"baroque";  but  it  was  that  the  whole  idea  of 
structural  logic  was  submerged,  and  the  architects 
of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  became 
mere  children,  building  up  their  invertebrate 
block-houses  for  their  own  amazement  and  our  — 
wondering  imitation.  Not  one  new  thought  in 
logical  construction  was  evolved,  while  those 
inherited  from  the  past  were  discarded  as  bar- 
barous and  "  Gothic." 
In  the  light  of  this  extraordinary  degeneration, 

r 

I  the  achievement  of  the  French  masons  of  the 
thirteenth  century  stands  forward  forever  as  one 
of  the  crowning  glories  of  man.  j  In  its  beginnings 
it  was  pure  logic;  almost  Greek  in  its  consistency, 
its  superb  self-restraint,  its  dependence  on  proved 
and  authoritative  precedent.  Later  the  self- 
restraint  began  to  disappear,  though  the  splendid 
logic  still  remained,  until  at  the  end  this  also 
vanished,  and  the  passion  for  pure  decoration  took 
its  place,  artistic  ingenuity  confined  to  the  develop- 
71 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

ment  of  exquisite,  lace-like  detail,  until,  law  and 
logic  forgotten,  nothing  remained  but  a  phantasma- 
goria of  dream-like  decoration.  ,- 

In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  Gothic  was 
always  a  means  of  personal  expression,  a  vehicle 
for  the  manifestation  of  human  imagination.  No 
British  monk  or  mason  would  for  a  moment  con- 
sent to  be  bound  by  any  system  or  precedent  he 
found  hampering.  The  work  done  yesterday  was 
only  a  point  of  departure  for  the  work  of  to-day, 
which  in  its  turn  was  but  a  stepping-stone  towards 
that  of  to-morrow.  Almost  every  man  who  built, 
invented  some  new  scheme,  but  neither  he  himself, 
nor  any  of  his  followers  or  successors,  had  the 
patience  —  or  was  it  the  lack  of  genius  ?  —  to 
work  any  one  of  them  out  even  to  partial  per- 
fection. English  Gothic  is  simply  a  collection 
of  dissociated  themes,  if  we  regard  it  narrowly 
as  a  style,  but  in  the  larger  view  it  is  the  splendid 
record  of  the  hopes  and  visions  and  wholesome 
humours  of  a  race  of  active,  enthusiastic,  healthy 
Christian  men. 

72 


THE    GOTHIC   ASCENDENCY 

And  it  is  to  these  two  great,  national  manifesta- 
tions of  lofty  civilization  that  we  who  prefer  Chris- 
tian things  to  pagan  and  look  on  art  as  a  language  i 
and  not  as  a  pastime, — it  is  to  these  that  we  return 
for  our  inspiration  and  in  order  that  we  may  learn 
anew  the  basic  laws  of  our  art,  forgotten  now 
these  many  centuries.  Not  because  we  believe 
that  through  faithful  copying  and  slavish  mimicry 
we  may  rebuild  a  fictitious  but  plausible  simula- 
crum of  sound  architecture,  but  for  two  very  clear 
and  definite  reasons  that  seem  to  us  good. 

The  first  reason  is  this:  because  we  find  the  eter- 
nal laws,  first  given  in  Greece,  continued  and 
further  elaborated  and  developed  under  Mediseval- 
ism  until  they  achieved  perfect  clarity  and  finality, 
while  as  we  look  at  the  matter,  these  same  Grgeco- 
mediaeval  laws  were  negatived  and  destroyed  by 
the  architects  of  the  pagan  Renaissance.  In  the 
second  place,  we  are  convinced  after  considerable 
study  that  the  pure  beauty  which  was  the  object 
of  all  Hellenic  art  was  restored  by  the  Christian 
civilization  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  raised  to  a  yet 
73 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

loftier  plane  of  perfection,  while  during  the  Renais- 
sance beauty  ceased  to  be  operative  and  gradually 
crumbled  away  until,  with  the  final  triumph  of 
this  same  Renaissance,  it  vanished  utterly  from 
architecture,  as  later  it  was  to  vanish  from  the 
other  arts  as  well. 

Now  these  two  things  must  be  restored,  struc- 
tural logic  and  absolute  beauty,  or  rather  the 
sense  of  these  things  must  be  acquired  again.  If 
oiu-  contention  is  justified,  viz.,  that  in  Hellenism 
and  in  Mediaevalism  these  things  come  full  tide, 
the  ebb  following  instantly  after  the  fall  of  the 
mediaeval  system,  then  to  these  two  periods  must 
we  go  for  the  knowledge  and  the  inspiration  we 
so  grievously  need. 

And  then?  Why  then  we  can  really  begin,  for 
erudition  and  archaeology  are  useless  save  as 
means  to  an  end,  and  that  end  is  creative  expres- 
sion. If  we  can  steep  ourselves  in  all  the  mar- 
vellous logic  and  reason  and  law  of  Greece  and 
Mediaevalism;  if  by  faithful  and  even  passionate 
study  of  absolute  beauty  as  it  is  revealed  to  us 
74 


THE    GOTHIC    ASCENDENCY 

by  them  we  can  acquire  again  that  instinct  for 
beauty  that  should  be  the  heritage  of  man,  —  if 
we  can  accomphsh  this,  then  we  shall  be  able, 
perhaps,  to  use  the  mystical  language  of  art  to 
some  effect.  And  when  this  happens,  if  ever  it 
does,  the  result  will  be  very  different  in  its  out- 
ward seeming  to  the  Greek  or  the  Gothic  of  the 
past.  There  is  no  exclusive  sanctity  to  either, 
and  neither  is  the  last  and  final  word.  The  best 
thus  far  beyond  a  doubt,  but  ages  lie  before  us 
and  each  must  develop  its  own  perfect  tongue. 

We  return  then  to  Gothic  art,  since  it  was  Jhe 
last  word  in  point  of  time  in  the  development  of 
sound_and  honourable  and  significant  and  beau- 
tiful  architecture;  but  we  return  only  for  the 
moment,  and  for  the  sake  of  getting  a  fresh  start: 
the  road  that  opened  invitingly  so  long  ago  has 
led  only  into  the  wilderness;  we  will  try  again, 
and  whether  or  no  we  choose  from  the  ramifying 
roads  the  one  that  leadeth  to  salvation  is  a  matter 
altogether  veiled  in  impenetrable  cloud. 


7S 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR 
CHURCHES 


MEETING-HOUSES  OR   CHURCHES 

'  I  ^HE  title  I  have  chosen  for  the  paper  which 
-*-  I  am  to  read  before  you  this  evening  may 
possibly  seem  a  curious  one  for  what  is,  avow- 
edly, nothing  more  than  a  plea  for  beauty  in  our 
churches,  or  at  the  most  an  argument  for  the  vital 
union  of  beauty  and  worship;  but  I  think  it  is 
justifiable,  and,"  in  a  measure,  accurate,  for  I 
firmly  believe  that  in  the  attempt  to  substitute 
meeting-houses  for  churches,  which  was  such  a 
pious  enterprise  in  the  earnest  but  oblique  minds 
of  our  Puritan  ancestors,  lay  the  cause,  not  only 
of  the  very  doleful  structures  reared  by  these 
same  worthy  Puritans  under  the  mistaken  idea 
that  so  they  were  doing  God  service,  but  as  well, 
of  the  very  reprehensible  religious  edifices  that  we 
are  now  building,  and  of  the  peculiar  mental 
79 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

condition  which  prevents  us  from  realizing,  as  we 
should,  their  unfortunate  nature. 

In  other  words,  the  temporarily  successful  at- 
tempt to  supersede  churches  by  meeting-houses 
resulted  in  utterly  banishing  beauty  from  our 
houses  of  worship,  while  this  lamentable  condition 
of  things  was,  in  its  turn,  one  of  the  most  potent 
factors  in  creating  the  existing  state  of  artistic 
impotence  and  blindness. 

Of  course  the  dominant  mental  temper  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  with  its  terrible  earnestness, 
its  bitter  bigotry,  its  lack  of  "sweetness  and  light," 
taking  its  tone,  as  it  did,  from  the  new  dominion 
of  the  less  favoured  classes,  with  all  their  mistaken 
views  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  their  literalness, 
their  materialism,  was  at  the  root  of  it  all,  and 
the  fault  must  be  charged  to  this  rather  than  to 
the  unbeautiful  structures  which  were  the  result 
of  an  unbeautiful  theory  of  religion;  but  the  in- 
fluence of  art,  whether  good  or  bad,  is  enormous, 
and  not  to  be  disregarded,  and,  therefore,  as  the 
spread  and  glory  and  dominion  of  Catholic  Chris- 
80 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

tianity  may  be  traced  in  a  secondary  measure  to 
its  sublime  artistic  manifestations,  so  may  we  be 
justified  in  attributing  something  of  the  artistic 
dark  ages  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  of  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth,  to  the  ugly  and  barren 
work  which  expressed  in  material  form  the  religion 
for  a  time  called  "reformed." 

A  great  many  other  causes  are  assigned  for  the 
humiliating  fact  that  the  churches  we  now  build 
are  unworthy,  the  most  magnificent  of  them,  to 
stand  for  a  moment  with  the  humblest  mediaeval 
parish  church,  for  the  fact  is  humiliating,  and 
when  it  is  not  bravely  and  blindly  denied  point- 
blank  by  those  worthy  men  for  whom  there  can 
be  neither  retrogression  nor  immobility  in  life,  it 
must  at  least  be  explained.  Yet  no  such  expla- 
nation is  satisfactory;  it  is  doubtful,  even,  if  the 
apologists  themselves  believe  their  excuses.  It  is 
no  explanation  of  the  hideousness  of  life  and  the 
puerile  mimicry  of  art  which  exist  to-day,  to  say 
that  we,  in  this  country,  have  no  time  for  art  and 
for  the  other  amenities  of  life.     On  the  contrary. 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

we  all  know  that  art  is  not  a  scientific  or  economic 
product.  We  know  that  it  is  a  mental  temper,  a 
spiritual  condition,  and  we  know  that  it  is  just  as 
much  an  adjunct  of  wholesome  life  as  is  bodily 
health.  We  have  time  enough  for  art,  much  more 
than  many  peoples  have  possessed  in  the  past. 
Beauty  takes  no  time.  A  good  church  can  be 
built  as  quickly  as  a  bad  church.  It  takes  no 
longer  to  paint  a  good  than  a  poor  picture  — 
much  less  in  fact.  We  spend  in  a  year  more 
money  on  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  art  educa- 
tion, more  labour  in  our  art  schools  and  ateliers 
and  oflSces,  than  was  spent  in  Italy  during  the 
whole  fourteenth  century,  —  and  yet,  when  the 
result  is  nil  —  at  the  best  —  we  cry  pitifully, 
"What  would  you  have,  we  are  so  young  yet?" 
That  is  the  excuse  of  a  coward.  When  the  Greeks 
set  fopt  on  the  shores  of  the  land  they  called 
Magna  Graecia,  were  they  compelled  to  wait  a 
century  or  two  before  they  could  build  temples  as 
beautiful  as  those  they  had  left?  By  no  means; 
the  lines  of  the  temple  of  Poseidon  at  Paestum  are 

82 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

as  subtle  and  as  sensitive  as  those  of  the  Parthenon. 
When  Roger  the  Norman  conquered  Sicily  and 
founded  a  new  civilization,  did  a  period  of  artistic 
depravity  ensue?  On  the  contrary,  the  art  of  the 
new  Norman  kingdom  became  in  a  short  time 
infinitely  more  beautiful  than  any  then  existing  in 
the  land  from  which  the  conquerors  had  come. 
When  the  Spaniards  won  Mexico  and,  Mr.  Pres- 
cott  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  established 
there  a  civilization  in  many  ways  more  gentle, 
more  admirable,  than  that  of  the  Aztecs,  did 
they  build  hideous  boxes  for  churches?  The 
superb  cathedrals,  the  finest  architectural  mon- 
uments in  the  New  World,  the  rough  missions 
of  California,  beautiful  even  in  their  rudeness 
with  a  beauty  we  can  no  longer  achieve, 
give  the  answer.  Finally,  when  our  own  Pu- 
ritan ancestors  came  here,  did  eyen  they  build 
such  very  vulgar  and  terrible  structures,  as, 
for  example,  certain  of  our  Boston  churches  and 
meeting-houses?  I  very  much  fear  that  the 
answer  to  these  questions  will  show  that  our  art 
83 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

is  bad,  not  because  we  are  so  young,  but 
because  we  are  so  old. 

The  plea,  then,  of  our  excessive  youth  is  neither 
excuse  nor  explanation;  the  true  cause  lies  deeper, 
nearer  the  roots  of  life  itself. 

It  is  sometimes  acknowledged  by  those  who  are 
seeking  for  the  reason  why  this  country,  so  bril- 
liant in  many  ways,  should  be  so  barren  artisti- 
cally, that  it  looks  as  though  we  had  lost  the 
artistic  spirit.  This  is  simply  stating  the  condition 
in  another  way.  Of  course  we  have  lost  the 
artistic  spirit,  but  why  have  we  lost  it,  what  has 
been  the  cause?  This  is  a  far  more  pertinent 
question,  and  is  one  more  worthy  of  consideration. 
Were  the  answer  to  this  sought  seriously,  one  or 
two  things  would,  I  think,  become  apparent.  In 
the  first  place,  we  should  find  that  all  the  art  that 
exists  in  the  world  at  the  present  day,  all  the  art, 
that  is,  down  to  the  sixteenth  century,  the  art  of 
Egypt,  Assyria,  India,  Japan,  the  art  of  every 
country  in  Europe,  whether  created  under  pagan 
or  Christian  influence,  all  this  treasure  of  wondrous 
84  "" 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

art  owes  its  existence  to  one  motive,  one  impulse, 
—  the  passion  of  worship,  the  serving  of  God. 

In  the  second  place,  we  should  find  that  all  the 
Christian  art  that  exists,  whether  it  be  architec- 
ture, sculpture,  painting,  music,  craftsmanship, 
owes  its  life  and  its  glory  to  one  power,  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  we  should  find  also  that,  although 
Protestantism  has  held  dominion  in  Germany, 
England,  Scandinavia,  and  the  United  States  for 
several  hundred  years,  it  has  produced  no  vital 
art  of  any  kind;  such  sporadic  instances  as  have 
occurred  possessing  no  connection  whatever  with 
the  dominant  form  of  theology.  We  should  also 
find  that  the  decadence  of  art  has  been  almost 
unbroken  since  the  period  called  the  Reformation. 
I  argue  nothing  from  these  facts,  I  wish  only  to 
call  attention  to  them. 

In  speaking  of  art  in  this  way,  I  do  not  mean 
that  no  art  whatever  has  existed  in  the  Christian 
world  since  the  sixteenth  century.  That  would  be 
grotesque.  I  only  mean  that  instinctive  art,  that 
universal  impulse  which  glorified  the  humblest 
85 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

kitchen  utensil  in  classical  or  Mediaeval  or  Renais- 
sance times,  has  disappeared;  the  instinctive  art 
work  of  the  people  is  now  bad;  such  art  as  there  is, 
is  the  possession  of  a  very  few  divinely  inspired 
or  specially  trained  men,  and  if  anything  good  is 
to  be  done,  application  must  be  made  to  a  "  pro- 
fessional artist."  Let  me  call  your  attention  to 
the  fact  that  for  the  first  time  since  history  began, 
this  thing  can  be  said,  the  first  time  in  thousands 
of  years.  Is  not  this  ominous?  I  think  so,  and 
I  think  also  that  it  is  significant. 

Now,  is  it  merely  a  coincidence  that  this  condi- 
tion should  obtain  most  vigorously  in  the  country 
which  has  seen  the  growth  of  the  most  unreligious, 
materialistic  system  of  life  that  the  century  has 
produced?  Is  it  merely  a  coincidence  that,  in 
the  period  in  the  past  with  which  ours  has  the 
most  in  common  —  the  decadence  of  Rome  —  we 
should  find  what  comes  nearest  to  being  a  downfall 
of  art  almost  equal  to  our  own  ? 

For  myself,  I  doubt  if  coincidences  occur  very 
frequently.  I  am  disposed  to  think  that  there  is 
86 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

a  close  connection  between  the  religious  troubles 
of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the  artistic  troubles 
that  followed.  In  other  words,  that  the  substitu- 
tion of  meeting-houses  for  churches  may  perhaps 
lie  somewhere  near  the  source  of  our  artistic 
decadence. 

But  however  this  may  be,  you  will  not,  I  am 
sure,  dispute  the  statement  that  the  era  of  ugly 
religious  architecture  and  barren  religious  art 
began  with  the  period  of  the  Reformation.  The 
documents  in  the  case  prove  this.  The  enthu- 
siastic reformers  in  England  showed  their  devotion 
to  God  by  first  burning,  plundering,  and  razing 
to  the  ground  the  monasteries  and  many  of  the 
churches,  by  dashing  into  ruin  all  the  statues  and 
carving  and  the  splendid  painted  glass,  and  by 
melting  down  all  the  gold  and  silver  vessels,  and 
appropriating  all  the  jewels  which  had  been  con- 
secrated to  God,  and  then  proceeded  to  turn  the 
pitiful  ruins  of  once  holy  and  glorious  fabrics  into 
whitewashed  shells,  or  to  build  very  terrible  struc- 
tures, square,  empty,  and  forbidding,  full  of  the 
87 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

blind  terror  of  fanatical  ignorance  and  the  phari- 
saic  contentment  of  incorrigible  bigotry.  And  so 
they  have  remained  until  a  few  years  ago,  when 
suddenly  rose  that  most  extraordinary  cry,  "Go 
to,  let  us  have  some  High  Art."  Then  the  bareness 
vanished,  and  that  very  inartistic  man,  the  archi- 
tect, plunged  in  a  riot  of  aesthetic  debauchery. 
The  whole  world  was  ransacked  for  motives  and 
schemes,  and  now  in  this  year  of  grace  there  is  not  a 
Christian  style,  or  pagan  either,  that  has  not  been 
dragged  from  its  grave  by  this  curious  resurrec- 
tion, and  made  a  by-word  and  a  reproach  in  the 
sight  of  men;  and  yet  we  have  not  a  real,  vital, 
spontaneous,  genuine  church  in  the  whole  fan- 
tastic pageant,  not  one  that  says,  "I  was  built  in 
the  sweat  of  the  brows  of  men  who  loved  God,  and 
who  brought  here  of  their  best  that  they  might  do 
honour  to  Him  with  all  the  beauty  and  treasure 
that  lay  in  their  hands." 

We  build  churches  enough,  too  many;  but  how 
often  do  they  rise,  in  their  outward  effect,  above 
the  impression  of  a  religious  club,  or  a  monument 
8S 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

to  the  wealth  of  a  special  parish.  Money  in 
plenty  is  lavished  on  them,  and  with  a  dim  idea 
that  by  such  expenditure  a  beautiful  result  will  be 
obtained.  But  is  it?  All  that  glitters  is  not  art. 
The  church  may  be  carved  into  rivalry  with  a' 
Japanese  ivory  ball,  it  may  be  painted  with  all 
the  colours  of  the  paint  box,  all  the  patterns  in 
Owen  Jones'  Grammar  of  Ornament.  Its  win- 
dows may  blaze  with  intolerable  light,  it  may 
have  a  spire  taller  than  the  pinnacles  of  Cologne, 
and  yet  it  may  not  possess  one  breath  of  art,  one 
line  of  beauty. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  mostly  does  not.  Take 
the  ordinary  Roman  Catholic,  Methodist,  Baptist 
structure:  can  it  do  otherwise  than  make  the 
judicious  grieve  ?  Its  building  committee  has  worn 
itself  out  trying  to  get  something  that  would  be 
"rich  and  elegant";  its  architect  has  ransacked 
two  hemispheres  for  inspiration;  and  the  result? 
—  a  self-conscious,  afifected,  bizarre  monument  to 
the  impotence  of  the  age.  And  here  again,  for 
the  mental  temper,  for  the  spiritual  condition 
89 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

which  makes  this  tyrrany  of  the  ignorant  architect 
complete,  which  makes  possible  a  serene  content- 
ment in  the  minds  of  the  public  with  the  grotesque 
monstrosities  we  all  know,  we  are  justified  in  look- 
ing to  the  meeting-house  builders.  Driven  by  the 
fancied  teachings  of  a  woefully  misread  and  mis- 
understood Bible,  and  by  the  natural  reaction 
from  the  dominant  religious  system,  weakened 
and  corrupted  by  the  recrudescence  of  paganism, 
they  ruthlessly  stamped  out  of  their  souls  every 
vestige  of  the  love  of  beauty  and  art,  not  only  the 
love  of  the  fine  arts  themselves,  but  of  all  beauty 
of  thought,  and  feeling,  and  emotion;  and  as  a 
result  they  gave  to  their  children  lives  to  which 
the  aristic  idea  was  utterly  foreign,  lives  from 
which  instinctive  love  of  beauty  and  appreciation 
thereof  had  been  banished  forever. 

Now,  this  is  a  very  serious  matter,  for  the  ab- 
sence of  all  worship  of  beauty,  of  artistic  impulse 
from  a  people,  means  far  more  than  that  these 
people  will  suffer  from  the  loss  of  one  of  the 
ornaments  of  civilization:  it  means  that  their  whole 
90 


MEETING-HOUSES   OR    CHURCHES 

mental  temper  will  be  changed,  that  the  results 
will  be  seen  in  every  domain  of  life,  that  the 
absence  of  a  saving  impulse  will  be  felt  in  the 
counting-room  and  stock  exchange,  as  well  as  in 
the  studio  and  picture  gallery;  in  the  police  courts 
and  the  reformatory  institutions  as  well  as  in  the 
churches;  in  the  whole  system  of  living  of  a  nation, 
not  alone  in  the  productions  of  the  painter  and 
the  architect.  It  means  that  our  minds  will  be- 
come narrow,  material,  unbeautiful;  our  religion, 
if  it  continues,  crude,  hard,  unlovely.  It  means 
that  we  shall  flaunt  and  worship  a  barren  and 
fictitious  civilization  from  which  all  elements  of 
real  civilization  have  fled.  So  high  I  put  art  and 
the  influence  of  beauty  and  the  just  love  of  beauty, 
and  if  you  want  my  justification  for  stating  these 
things  in  this  fashion  I  must  refer  you,  not  to  the 
histories  of  the  past  two  thousand  years,  for  they 
are  apt  not  to  be  historical,  but  to  the  history  of 
that  time. 

If  we  can  look  on  art  and  the  love  of  beauty  in 
this  light,  as  one  of  the  greatest  engines  of  true 
91 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

civilization  in  the  world,  the  fact  that  this  age, 
so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned,  is  essen- 
tially an  age  without  art,  must  seem  almost  the 
most  shocking  and  ominous  fact  that  we  have  to 
confront,  and  it  will  also  seem  that,  although  the 
revision  of  the  tariff,  and  the  free  coinage  of 
silver,  and  the  income  tax  are  matters  of  vital 
importance,  there  is  another  that,  judged  by  the 
standard  of  actual  necessity,  becomes  in  a  way 
the  most  important  and  imperative  of  all,  and 
that  is  this:  how  can  we  change  this  from  an 
art-less  to  an  art-full  age,  how  can  we  restore  to 
the  people  the  soul  that  is  gone  out  of  them  ? 

To  this  question  the  ordinary  reply  would  be, 
"By  increasing  the  number  and  broadening  the 
influence  of  our  schools  of  art;  by  multiplying  art 
lectures  and  strengthening  art  museums."  At  the 
risk  of  ridicule  I  am  going  to  confess  to  a  belief 
that,  so  far  as  changing  the  temper  of  the  time  is 
concerned,  or  the  increasing  of  the  love  of  art, 
the  worship  of  beauty,  and  the  production  of 
artistic  and  beautiful  objects,  the  influence  of  the 
92 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

accepted  agencies  is  either  nothing  or  of  a  nature 
to  be  deplored.  In  almost  every  instance  the 
essence  of  art  and  the  secret  of  beauty  are  utterly 
ignored,  and  therefore  we  confront  the  phenome- 
non of  the  most  elaborate  system  of  art  education 
ever  evolved,  existing  simultaneously  with  the 
most  crudely  inartistic  conditions  that  have  ever 
been  known.  If  we  are  to  possess  a  civilization 
which  is  worth  expressing  itself  artistically,  we 
must  do  something  besides  establish  art-lecture- 
ships, we  must  change  the  conditions  of  life,  the 
temper  of  the  people;  and  we  must  begin  by 
substituting  churches  for  meeting-houses. 
N.  For  art  and  true  religion  are  united  by  the 
bond  of  absolute  life.  Each  strives  for,  each 
achieves  the  same  end,  the  realization  of  the 
ideal,  the  idealization  of  the  real.  '  Art 
trying  to  express  through  the  mystic  and 
sensuous  and  spiritual  symbolism  of  colour, 
and  form,  and  light  and  shade,  and  musical  tone, 
emotions  and  impressions  otherwise  inexpressible; 
religion  striving  to  voice  the  same  things  through 
93 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  mediumship  of  art,  to  sway  men's  minds  and 
exalt  their  spiritual  consciousness  by  means  of  the 
subtle  influence  of  solemn  architecture,  splendid 
colour,  majestic  and  sonorous  music,  stately,  won- 
derful ritual,  /'^nd  each  succeeds,  or  has  succeeded 
in  the  past,  and  the  reason  for  the  present  lament- 
able failure  lies,  very  largely,  I  believe,  in  their 
separation,  in  the  fact  that  art  has  been  banished 
from  the  Church,  the  Church  from  art,  until  so 
long  a  time  has  passed  that  each  has  forgotten  the 
former  union.  /Now  our  churches  here  in  America 
have  become  either  bare,  ugly  meeting-houses, 
destitute  of  symbolism  either  in  ritual  or  orna- 
mentation, or  else  vulgar  and  offensive  exhibitions 
of  tawdry  wealth,  striving  to  purchase  for  itself 
the  covering  of  art  wherewith  to  hide  its  naked- 
ness, failing  utterly,  only  attaining  a  measure  of 
popular  astonishment  and  gaping  admiration;  un- 
satisfactory substitutes  indeed  for  the  devotion, 
and  reverence,  and  awe,  which  once  raised  with 
loving  hands  mighty  temples  acceptable  to  God.\ 
Not  only  this  has  happened,  the  direct  result  of 
94 


MEETING-HOUSES  OR  CHURCHES 

the  substitution  of  the  meeting-house  for  the 
house  of  God,  but  also  the  destruction  of  sienifi- 
cant  and  beautiful  ceremonial.  >< 

And  this  question  of  ritual  is  as  much  a  legiti- 
mate part  of  our  consideration  as  the  question  of 
church  architecture,  perhaps  in  importance  it 
should  take  precedence,  for  beauty  of  ceremonial  can 
glorify  a  box  of  a  church,  while  a  cold  and  barren 
service  can  destroy  in  great  degree  the  effect  of 
any  church,  however  good  it  may  be  as  an  archi- 
tectural structure.  I  know  of  a  square,  hopelessly 
"gly  little  church  in  Boston,  built  many  years  ago 
A  the  meeting-house  style  of  architecture  and  for 
meeting-house  purposes,  where  the  worship  of 
God  is  conducted  with  a  ceremonial  so  beautiful 
in  every  detail,  so  full  of  deep  and  spiritual  feeling, 
that  one  absolutely  forgets  the  dingy  environment; 
the  art  of  ritual  has  done  its  work  and  has  wrapped 
the  worshipper  from  out  himself. 

On  the  other  hand  I  know  a  second  church,  in 
the  same  city,  which  is,  within,  a  gorgeous  mass  of 
colour  and  gold  and  carving  and  blazing  windows, 
95 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

yet  where  the  bald,  cheerless  service,  possessing 
nothing  of  beauty  beyond  the  solemn  words 
of  the  Prayer  Book,  leaves  one  spiritually 
cold,  undoes  the  work  of  the  architectural  sur- 
roundings. 

For  the  question  of  ritual  is  not  a  question  of 
fashion  or  custom  or  expediency,  or  even  wholly 
of  dogma.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  sense. 
Ritual  is,  in  one  aspect,  simply  a  manifestation 
of  art,  it  is  the  using  of  the  arts  of  sound  and 
colour  and  form  and  rhythm  and  harmony,  or- 
ganized by  order  and  law,  to  influence  the  souls 
of  men  through  their  senses,  by  means  of  their 
capacity  for  artistic  appreciation.  It  is  as  much  a 
branch  of  art  as  is  architecture,  and  it  will  be 
recognized  as  such,  and  its  wonderful  powers  for 
good  made  use  of  as  we  are  trying  now  to  use  the 
long-neglected  powers  of  architecture,  just  as  soon 
as  we  have  succeeded  in  wearing  out  the  rooted 
prejudice  which  sees  in  every  liturgical  vestment  the 
cloak  of  the  devil,  in  every  candle  and  whiff  of 
incense  a  snare  of  —  in  the  words  of  the  "  escaped 
96 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

nuns"  —  "the  Scarlet  Woman  on  her  Seven  Hills 
of  Sin." 

This  is,  then,  I  think,  one  of  the  first  necessities 
of  beauty  in  public  worship  that  demands  consider- 
ation, the  need  of  beauty  of  ceremonial.  A  noble 
and  imposing  service,  complete  in  its  reverent  and 
solemn  ritual,  will,  I  suspect,  do  more  good,  have 
a  deeper  spiritual  effect,  than  many  a  sermon;  and 
if  we  are  to  see  Christianity  take  the  leadership  in 
extricating  the  world  from  the  slough  in  which  it 
has  lost  itself,  it  will  be  well  for  us  to  recognize 
the  nobility  of  the  emotions,  their  close  connection 
with  religious  feeling,  and  their  instant  sympathy 
with  all  forms  of  art,  particularly  the  art  of 
ritual. 

And  now  let  us  come  to  a  possibly  more  legiti- 
mate subject  of  inquiry  —  for  myself:  the  question 
of  art  in  houses  of  public  worship.  Why  are 
churches  so  almost  universally  bad  as  they  are 
now?  I  think  it  is,  first  of  all,  because  during 
the  last  two  hundred  years  we  have  mixed  up  the 
functions  of  a  church  very  seriously,  and  to  the 
97 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

extreme  injury  of  our  churches,  and  of  the  Church 
as  well. 

For  sixteen  hundred  years,  from  the  day  of  the 
Apostles  until  that  of  Luther,  a  church  had  three 
aspects:  first,  that  of  a  Tabernacle,  an  earthly 
abode  of  God;  second,  that  of  a  Sanctuary,  a  place 
for  the  solemnizing  of  the  Church's  Sacraments; 
third,  that  of  a  meeting-house.  So  long  as  this 
threefold  function  was  recognized,  so  long  as  a 
church  was  built  in  worship,  made  glorious  with 
all  the  treasure  that  might  be  lavished  by  devoted 
hands,  so  long  as  it  was  in  very  truth  a  Gate  of 
Heaven  where  man  and  the  invisible  saints  and 
angels  met  in  the  awful  presence  of  God,  —  just 
so  long  did  it  remain  a  true  church,  the  spiritual 
home  of  a  community.  And  while  this  age  en- 
dured, the  church  took  another  aspect,  that  of  a 
great,  silent,  irresistible  agency  for  the  influencing 
of  the  souls  of  men  through  the  ministry  of  exalted 
art.  But  the  moment  misguided  persons  forgot 
that  a  church  was  anything  but  a  meeting- 
house where  any  one  of  an  hundred  different  sets 
98 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

of  men,  each  supremely  satisfied  with  its  own 
trivial  version  of  the  teachings  of  the  Bible,  might 
gather  to  feed  its  self-satisfaction  with  the  agreeable 
discourses  of  its  chosen  mouthpiece,  the  moment 
meeting-houses,  with  their  bare  and  forbidding 
walls  and  their  rented  pews,  their  glorified  pulpits 
and  insignificant  Communion  tables,  and  their 
atmosphere  of  a  country  parlour,  open  one  day 
in  the  week,  locked  on  the  others,  —  the  moment 
these  curious  structures  took  the  place  of  real 
churches,  that  moment  the  dark  ages  of  Chris- 
tian art  began;  that  moment  the  world  which 
accepted  the  new  religion  was  absolved  from  its 
allegiance  to  Christianity,  and  though  strenuous 
efiforts  were  made  to  browbeat  the  nations  into 
terrified  subservience,  though  a  more  rigid  union 
of  Church  and  state  was  attempted  than  had  ever 
been  before,  the  effort  was  in  vain,  the  legal  con- 
nection snapped,  the  spiritual  tie  was  dissolved, 
and  henceforth  religion  was  a  thing  apart,  and, 
as  a  result,  art  vanished  in  large  measure  from 
the  daily  life  of  the  people. 
99 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Now  how  shall  we  be  saved  from  the  body  of 
this  death,  for  saved  we  must  be  if  art  holds  any- 
thing of  the  position  I  have  claimed  for  it,  and  if 
through  noble  religious  architecture  may  lie  in 
part  the  way  of  our  deliverence  from  materialism 
and  scepticism  and  the  ills  we  are  now  heir  to? 
In  the  first  place,  I  should  say,  we  must  begin  a 
great  movement  which  can  best  be  called  a  begin- 
ing  of  the  Restoration,  —  for  that  I  am  sure  is 
the  name  by  which  the  next  epoch  of  the  world 
will  be  known.  ^We  must  return  to  the  ancient 
idea  of  the  functions  of  a  church,  and  the  order 
of  their  precedence.  J^e  must  cease  looking  on 
the  house  of  God  as  a  Sunday  club;  we  must  give 
as  men  gave  in  the  fourteenth  century;  we  must 
give  with  the  spirit  with  which  they  gave,  for  if 
we  give  from  motives  of  ostentation,  emulation, 
self-glorification,  our  work  will  be  as  hideous  as 
it  is  now,  and  we  ourselves  shall  be  deservedly 
damned.  We  must  build  churches  which  are, 
first  of  all,  churches,  and  not  meeting-houses.  jiVe 
must  realize  that  art  is  the  servant  of  God,  and 

lOO 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

that  its  place  is  in  the  church  rather  than  in  our 
art  museums.  /  We  must  make  our  churches  all 
glorious  within,  with  all  the  pomp  and  majesty  of 
wonderful  art,  and  if  we  honestly  try  to  do  this, 
and  with  an  honourable  motive,  we  shall  soon  have 
enough  good  art  to  do  it  with.  Finally,  we  must 
abandon  forever  our  modern  theories  of  church 
planning.  We  must  go  back  to  mediaeval  times,^ 
back  to  the  day  when  Luther  killed  all  art  but 
music  in  Germany,  when  Calvin  killed  all  right- 
eous art  in  France,  and  when  Henry  VHI  killed 
all  art  of  any  kind  whatever  in  England,  and 
take  up  the  work  where  then  it  was  broken  ofif. 
V  We  must  realize  that  the  first  desideratum  of  a 
church  is  not  that  from  every  seat  therein  the 
occupant  may  be  able  to  see  the  pulpit  without 
turning  his  head,  but  that,  so  far  as  man  is  con- 
cerned, it  is  that  he  shall  be  filled  with  the  righteous 
sense  of  awe  and  mystery  and  devotion.  And 
if  this  result  may  be  obtained  by  massive 
columns  and  piers,  by  dim  light  and  narrow, 
shadowy  aisles,  by  cavernous  vaults  and  soaring 

lOI 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

arches,  then  these  things  we  must  have,  even  if 
some  people  have  to  sit  behind  pillars,  and  even 
if  we  can't  see  every  change  in  facial  expression 
of  the  preacher. 

For  by  this  course  we  may  be  enabled  at  last 
to  combat  the  destructive  influences  of  contem- 
porary social  and  political,  artistic  and  religious 
conditions,  to  mitigate  in  a  measure  their  malign 
effects  on  life,  and  so  lay  the  foundations  for  the 
restoration  of  the  noble  things  that  we  have  re- 
jected, win  back  the  old  lamps  we  have  foolishly 
sold  for  new.y^We  may  cover  the  land  with 
ateliers  and  studios,  add  to  the  intolerable  din 
the  clamour  of  innumerable  "teachers  of  art," 
and  our  labour  will  be  wasted.  Only  through  a 
new  vision  of  the  mystery  of  life  and  its  duties, 
only  through  a  restored  knowledge  of  the  essen- 
tials of  this  world,  can  beauty  and  art  be  brought 
back  to  a  people  that  knows  them  not.  Their 
return  will  be  the  evidence  of  the  victory  of  the 
Restoration,  showing  that  the  fight  is  won,  and 
that  the  reign  of  materialism  is  at  an  end.     With 

I02 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

the  dawn  of  this  new  Hfe,  art  and  rehgion  will 
stand  side  by  side,  invincible  in  union,  the  fruit 
of  victory,  the  guaranty  of  its  endurance. 

And  now  for  a  close  I  want  to  describe  to  you 
a  meeting-house  and  a  church  that  I  know,  as 
they  appear  inside.  One  was  built  in  a  year,  the 
other  in  about  five  centuries.  One  represents  the 
sort  of  thing  we  have  arrived  at  by  way  of  meeting- 
house-ism: the  other  what  we  have  lost  by  the 
same  means.  Here  is  the  interior  of  the  meeting- 
house: 

In  plan  it  is  a  Greek  cross  with  shallow  arms, 
a  slight  recess  at  one  end  serving  in  place  of  a 
chancel;  the  floor  slopes  like  that  of  a  theatre, 
and  the  curving  lines  of  theatre  chairs  are  uphol- 
stered with  imitation  red  leather;  the  walls  are 
very  low,  —  you  could  almost  touch  the  cornice 
with  your  hand,  but  the  roof  rises  with  a  steep 
pitch,  high  in  the  middle,  supported  by  elaborate, 
but  flimsy  and  unscientific  trusses,  lots  of  them, 
until  the  roof  is  a  confusion  of  unnecessary  and 
trivial  timbers.  The  wood-work  is  of  natural  oak, 
103 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

like  a  railway  station,  very  yellow  and  very  cheap; 
the  walls  are  painted  a  terra-cotta  at  the  base 
and  a  muddy  olive  above,  with  a  border  of  yellow 
between,  stenciled  with  Saracenic  patterns.  In 
each  arm  of  the  cross  is  a  window,  —  one  round, 
one  three-fold,  one  round  arched,  one  with 
a  square  head,  and  all  are  filled  with  tawdry  and 
virulent  glass  in  absurd  designs;  for  example,  a 
pink  angel  hanging  over  two  small  children, 
clothed  one  in  yellow  and  one  in  peacock  blue, 
who  are  chasing  magenta  butterflies,  —  a  memo- 
rial to  two  children,  I  believe.  The  kind  of  fur- 
niture one  finds  in  Odd  Fellows'  lodges  is  on  the 
platform,  and  the  entire  floor  is  covered  with  a 
violent  carpet  of  red  and  black.  Everything  is 
very  light,  almost  dazzling,  and  at  night  electric 
lights  in  brass  sockets  blaze  everywhere.  But 
how  give  an  idea  of  the  architectural  horror  of  it 
all?  Not  one  fine  line  in  it,  not  one  artistic  pro- 
portion, not  a  bit  of  shadow,  not  a  suspicion  of 
composition.  The  whole  thing  cut  up  by  hun- 
dreds of  little  columns  and  arches  which  one 
104 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

could  almost  throw  down  with  one's  hand.  Every- 
where an  effect  of  cheap  and  tawdry  ostenta- 
tiousness;  everywhere  the  complexity  of  inane 
elaboration  and  panic-stricken  incapacity. 

I  heard  public  service  here  once,  —  for  which 
act  I  hope  to  be  forgiven.  It  consisted  of  several 
extemporaneous  and  rather  explanatory  prayers, 
an  anthem  by  a  quartet  of  expensive  singers,  the 
reading  of  some  psalms,  a  solo  —  quite  unintel- 
ligible —  by  the  soprano,  and  an  address  by  the 
minister.  He  was  in  evening  dress,  though  it  was 
at  half  after  ten  in  the  morning.  The  subject  of 
the  discourse  was,  "The  Humanitarianism  of 
Browning's  Caliban  upon  Setebos." 

Such  is  the  goal  to  which  meeting-house-ism 
has  led  us,  and  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  if 
my  mind  wandered  back  across  the  sea  to  a 
mouldering  monument  of  the  time  when  a  church 
was  God's  holy  temple,  not  man's  Sunday  club. 
Will  you  come  with  me  while  we  look  upon  that 
which  we  have  lost,  and  which  we  must  labour 
for  the  future  to  regain? 
los 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

It  is  May-time  and  the  air  is  very  still.  On  the 
heights  over  the  little  town,  where  the  crowded 
roofs  that  surge  like  dark  waves  against  the  rugged 
cliffs  break  into  a  foam  of  living  verdure,  rise 
the  shadowy  towers  and  pinnacles  of  a  church.  In 
the  still  air  the  great  bells  boom  sonorously,  while 
from  every  street  and  lane  the  people  are  gathering 
to  join  in  public  worship  of  the  God  Who  made 
heaven  and  earth.  With  them  we  climb  the  clififs 
and  stand  at  last  before  the  rugged  walls  and 
massive  buttresses  that  rise  high  into  the  pale  sky, 
growing  richer  and  more  delicate  as  they  ascend, 
until  far  above  they  are  fretted  into  marvellous 
delicacy  of  pinnacles  and  niches  and  slim  gables, 
rich  with  a  wealth  of  carven  foliage  and  knotted 
crockets,  and  solemn  figures  of  sculptured  saints 
and  angels. 

In  the  midst  of  the  shadowy  west  front  the  wall 
opens,  and  a  great  doorway  is  hollowed  therein, 
like  a  cavern  in  the  living  rock.  On  either  side 
are  ranged  the  figures  of  saints  in  marshalled  lines, 
prophets  and  apostles,  martyrs,  kings  and  prel- 
io6 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

ates,  a  Christian  history,  rising,  rank  above  rank, 
in  the  midst  of  tangled  leafage  and  delicate  cano- 
pies, until  they  bend  under  the  lofty  arch  and 
meet  in  the  midst  where  the  Figure  of  the  Lord 
is  enthroned. 

From  the  dark  door  where  hangs  a  great  curtain 
of  leather  wrought  with  tarnished  gold  figures  and 
nail-heads  of  old  brass  comes  the  low  sound  of 
distant  music,  swelling  a  little  as  the  curtain  is 
drawn  aside,  fading  as  it  falls  again.  With  the 
other  worshippers  we  will  go  within.  There  is  a 
faint,  mellow  light,  mysterious  shadow,  solemn, 
monotonous  chanting,  the  odour  of  old  incense; 
and  everywhere  a  silence  that  the  distant  singing 
seems  only  to  intensify.  Where  we  stand  there  is 
a  vague,  palpitating  light  from  the  great  Catherine 
window  far  above  our  heads,  but  on  either  hand 
is  almost  impenetrable  purple  shadow,  where  fluted 
shafts  of  hoary  stone  rise,  forever,  it  would  almost 
seem,  until  they  spread  into  great  branching 
arches,  like  the  vast  limbs  of  forest  trees,  where  a 
faint,  fluctuant  light,  stained  with  dusky  hues, 
107 


THE    GOTHIC   QUEST 

breaks  through,  and  so  upward  until  they  lose 
themselves  in  absolute  gloom  far  overhead. 

The  stony  floor  is  worn  into  hollows  by  the 
feet  of  centuries,  yet  here  and  there  a  great  slab  is 
left  where  one  can  dimly  trace  the  outlines  of  the 
figure  of  a  recumbent  knight,  armoured,  with 
hands  folded  in  prayer;  here  and  there  a  dull 
burnished  space  of  brass  shows  a  similar  form, 
with  Latin  texts  chiselled  in  the  yellow  metal,  a 
chronicle  in  brass  and  stone. 

Let  us  pass  to  one  of  the  aisles  where  the  shadow 
is  thickest.  The  vaults  are  lower,  and  by  the  dim 
light  of  great  windows  where  crowded  years  have 
blotted  the  blazing  colours  and  the  vivid  figures 
into  a  mellow  mosaic  of  translucent  jewels,  we 
see  how  the  rigid  stone  has  been  wrought  into 
fantastical  forms,  and  how  the  hollow  vaults  are 
covered  with  great  pictures  where  the  colour  has 
faded  into  a  strange  harmony,  and  the  gold  of  the 
aureoles  is  dusky  and  dim. 

Down  the  wall  of  the  aisle,  beneath  the  tall 
windows,  are  crowded  tombs  of  carven  stone  and 
io8 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

precious  marbles,  —  armdd  knights  and  vested 
Bishops,  rigid  and  still  under  their  crumbling 
canopies.  The  wall  opens  into  a  golden  chapel, 
where  a  small  altar  rises  behind  an  iron  screen 
flecked  with  tarnished  gilding.  Over  it  is  the 
great  shadow  of  a  dim  picture  in  its  carven  frame, 
and  from  the  vaulted  roof  hang  lamps  of  iron  and 
wrought  brass,  each  with  its  palpitating  flame. 
To  one  side  is  a  great  tomb  of  ivory-coloured 
marble,  where  a  long-dead  Cardinal  sleeps,  his 
scarlet  hat  with  its  pendant  tassels  hanging  above 
him. 

Beyond  the  chapel  the  shadow  deepens,  and  as 
we  approach  the  chancel  the  music  grows  louder, 
and  we  hear  the  words  of  the  Mass.  From  a 
chapel  to  the  right  let  us  look  into  the  choir.  On 
either  side  rise  long  lines  of  stalls  of  black  oak 
inlaid  with  olive  wood,  each  with  its  gorgeous 
canopy  of  intricate  carving.  The  floor  is  paved 
with  a  maze  of  precious  marbles  in  tangled  pat- 
terns, and  in  the  midst  rises  a  vast  lectern  of 
carved  and  gilded  oak,  where  a  priest  in  a  long 
109 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

alb  of  ancient  yellow  lace  is  chanting  from  a 
gigantic  volume  bound  in  ivory-coloured  pig-skin, 
with  silver  clasps;  its  vellum  pages  stiff  with 
precious  illuminations  in  gold  and  purple  and 
Vermillion.  Behind  him  rise  many  steps  and  at 
the  summit  is  the  great  altar,  beneath  which  lie 
the  venerated  relics  of  a  Christian  martyr.  Be- 
hind and  above  looms  the  vast  reredos.  A 
marvellous  fabric  of  carven  stone,  crowded  with 
figures  of  saints,  it  rises  through  the  lower  shadow 
and  the  drifting  incense,  high  under  the  lofty 
vault  of  bending  stone  to  where  the  flush  of  painted 
light  from  storied  windows  burns  on  its  fretted 
crest,  staining  the  delicate  stone  with  gules  and 
azure.  Tall  candlesticks  of  wrought  gold  bearing 
slender  candles  gleam  against  its  ancient  surface, 
around  it  hang  lamps  of  silver  and  bronze,  and 
in  the  midst  is  lifted  the  Figure  of  the  Crucified, 
eternal  Symbol  of  the  Catholic  Faith  that  wrought 
this  wondrous  manifestation  of  love  and  adoration. 
The  cavernous  church  has  filled  with  people, 
who,  standing  in  every  part,  follow  the  mighty 
no 


MEETING-HOUSES    OR    CHURCHES 

Sacrifice  with  reverence  and  devotion.  A  chiming 
bell  gives  w^arning  of  the  Canon  of  the  Mass,  so 
unspeakably  solemn,  so  vastly  significant,  and  the 
multitude  falls  upon  its  knees.  In  the  Sanctuary, 
before  the  gleaming  altar,  the  Bishop,  surrounded 
by  priests  and  acolytes,  offers  the  Oblation  for 
the  v^^hole  people,  pleading  for  them  the  Sacrifice 
of  Calvary:  the  gorgeous  vestments,  heavy  with 
gold  and  jewels,  gleaming  through  the  veil  of 
incense,  as  the  splendid  and  awful  ceremonies 
move  solemnly  onward,  even  as  they  have  moved 
for  centuries  upon  centuries. 

A  bell  rings  in  the  Sanctuary;  the  music  has 
grown  very  soft  and  beautiul;  there  is  no  sound 
from  the  crowd  of  worshippers  kneeling  with 
bowed  heads  as  the  awful  Presence  of  God  enters 
into  His  holy  temple,  resting  in  benediction  on 
all  those  who  worship  therein. 

'*Simvi&  tiei.  qui  toU(0  peccata  munlii. 
mi0ttete  no!ii0/' 

By  and  by  the  Mass  is  finished,  the  people  have 
departed,  each  with  some  consolation,  some  help 
III 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

for  his  troubled  life.  With  a  very  different  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  the  ancient  faith  we  sit 
silent,  awed  a  little  by  the  overwhelming  signifi- 
cance of  that  which  we  have  seen.  The  Catholic 
Faith  has  become  a  larger  thing  to  us,  worship  a 
very  different  matter  to  what  we  had  known 
before.  It  is  cool  now  and  very  still.  Lost  in 
wonder  and  awe  we  could  sit  so  for  hours,  while 
the  shadows  gather  and  sleep  like  smoke  in  the 
silent  aisles  and  under  the  heavy  arches.  All  day 
like  a  flowing  river  the  lights  and  shadows  sweep 
to  and  fro,  gathering  now  in  transept,  now  in 
aisle,  now  in  some  silent  vault,  changing  ever, 
moving  endlessly.  Moving,  changing,  as  they 
have  moved  and  changed  for  almost  a  thousand 
years,  while  generations  have  lived  and  passed 
away,  kingdoms  have  risen  and  fallen,  nations 
disappeared  from  the  earth.  And  all  the  while 
the  torch  of  the  sacred  flame  has  been  given  from 
hand  to  hand,  all  the  while  the  holy  offices  have 
been  repeated  daily,  pleading  the  Sacrifice  of 
Calvary  for  the  sake  of  a  world  weary  with  sorrow 


MEETING-HOUSES  OR   CHURCHES 

and  sin.  So,  day  by  day,  something  of  precious 
memory,  of  sacred  association,  has  been  added 
to  this  church,  until  it  stands,  beautiful  with  the 
beauty  of  the  Heavenly  Jerusalem,  sonorous  with 
the  voice  of  living  centuries,  a  treasure  house,  an 
universal  sermon,  —  more:  a  divine  revelation,  a 
foreshadowing  of  the  unspeakable  glory  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God. 


"3 


THE   DEVELOPMENT  OF   ECCLE- 
SIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 
IN  ENGLAND 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF    ECCLESIAS- 
TICAL ARCHITECTURE  IN 
ENGLAND 

17^  VERY  day  and  increasingly  it  is  being  borne 
"*-^  in  upon  us  that  we  are  even  now  in  the  midst 
of  a  great  spiritual  awakening,  the  fruition  of  which 
no  man  may  foretell;  that  when  the  nineteenth 
century  closed  something  more  came  to  an  end 
than  an  arbitrary  epoch  of  time;  that  the  new 
century  is  destined  to  be  utterly  and  fundamentally 
different  to  the  last,  an  era  of  spiritual  expansion 
as  that  was  an  era  of  material  achievement.  Even 
the  absurd  and  ephemeral  follies  of  the  time,  the 
wild  seeking  for,  and  acceptance  of,  exaggerated 
types  of  personal  leadership,  so  long  as  they  are 
at  the  same  time  obscure,  dogmatic,  and  emo- 
tional, testify  to  the  indestructible  hunger  in  the 
human  soul  for  religion.  This  hunger  is  now, 
after  several  centuries  of  doubt,  denial,  and  vain 
117 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

agnosticism,  bursting  all  bonds,  and  clamouring 
for  the  long  denied  spiritual  food,  seizing  greedily 
upon  the  noxious  as  upon  the  wholesome,  so  only 
that  it  is  food,  and  of  the  kind,  apparently,  so  long 
discredited  and  refused  by  a  world  unbalanced  by 
the  destruction  of  the  sane  principles  of  law,  order, 
and  obedience. 

Another  evidence  of  this  remarkable  movement 
lies  in  the  altogether  extraordinary  recrudescence 
of  interest  in  ecclesiastical  architecture.  Seventy- 
five  years  ago  this  began  in  England,  accompanying 
the  great  spiritual  awakening  that  was  signalized 
by  the  Oxford  Movement.  For  nearly  half  a 
century,  however,  the  religious  revival  was  con- 
fined almost  wholly  within  the  Hmits  of  the  Estab- 
lished Church  in  England,  and  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  the  United  States.  It  worked  slowly 
and  quietly,  never  taking  on  the  aspect  of  a  great 
popular  movement,  for  it  was  coeval  with  the 
highest  popularity  of  the  ultra-scientific-agnostic 
phase  of  fashion.  The  earlier  revival  of  the 
Wesleys,  which  was  indeed  a  popular  movement, 
ii8 


ARCHITECTURE    IN    ENGLAND 

had  apparently  reached  the  limit  of  its  possibilities, 
and  for  fifty  years  little  was  done  beyond  the  slow, 
internal  reformation  of  the  Anglican  branch  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  —  the  English  "  counter- 
reformation"  it  might  well  be  called,  since  it  was 
aimed  so  largely  towards  undoing  the  evil  half  of 
the  notable  achievements  of  the  "Reformation." 
In  no  respect  a  widespread  uprising  of  the  race, 
it  was  a  movement  the  vast  potency  of  which  we 
are  beginning  now  to  understand,  as,  the  old 
superstitions  of  the  last  century  sloughed  off,  we 
find  a  strengthened  and  revivified  Church  ready 
to  lead  in  the  truly  popular  awakening  that  is  now 
in  progress. 

The  architectural  revival  incited  by  the  immortal 
Pugin  was  instantly  and  astoundingly  victorious 
in  England.  Ten  years  sufficed  to  see  the  last 
shards  of  the  classical  fashion  relegated  to  the 
dust  heap,  and  for  almost  seventy-five  years  Eng- 
land has  been  steadily  at  work,  labouring  in  very 
varied  ways  to  make  Gothic  or  Christian  archi- 
tecture a  living  thing  again.  At  one  time  it 
119 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

seemed  as  if  America  were  to  follow  suit,  but 
though  Upjohn  and  Renwick  did  their  best  — 
and  it  was  quite  as  good  as  the  then  contemporary 
work  of  England  —  the  products  of  their  disciples 
were  pretty  bad,  the  seed  fell  on  stony  ground, 
the  progress  lapsed,  and  when  Richardson  in- 
jected his  new  and  powerful  vitality  into  the  fer- 
ment, the  cause  was  lost,  and  after  his  death 
chaos,  utter  and  complete,  supervened. 

So  thorough  had  been  the  failure  of  the  Church 
to  demand  and  to  develop  a  consistent  style,  so 
utterly  had  she  failed  to  impress  on  the  people 
her  claims  to  consideration  and  the  opportunities 
afforded  by  her  necessities,  she  was  practically 
disregarded  by  the  great  schools  of  architecture 
growing  up  all  over  the  country;  no  thought  was 
given  to  her  needs,  or  even  to  the  fact  that  religion 
was  to  be  reckoned  with  either  historically  or 
practically;  the  entire  mediaeval  period  was  ignored 
as  of  no  architectural  account;  the  style  then 
evolved,  the  one  and  only  consistent  and  complete 
mode  of  building  developed  by  Christianity,  was 
1 20 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   ENGLAND 

rejected  as  barbarous  and  dead,  and  the  only 
style  held  up  for  admiration  was  one  which  did 
violence  to  every  Christian  principle  and  impulse. 
Even  now,  apart  from  a  slight  historical  patronage 
and  a  certain  whimsical  playing  with  Gothic 
forms  in  the  development  of  empirical  architec- 
tural problems,  —  as  one  might  amuse  one's  self 
in  the  effort  to  recreate  on  paper  an  Egyptian,  or 
Hindoo,  or  Buddhist  temple,  —  the  Christian  style 
of  architecture  is  practically  ignored,  and  if  a  man 
would  learn  to  serve  the  Church  in  stone  he  must 
learn  elsewhere  than  in  a  school  of  architecture. 

But  the  conditions  that  made  this  sort  of  thing 
possible  no  longer  exist;  the  world  is  getting  away 
from  the  schools,  men  have  learned  something  of 
the  wonder  and  the  perfection  and  the  persistent 
vitality  of  the  style  the  Church  developed,  and 
now  demands  again,  and  it  is  impossible  for  neo- 
paganism  longer  to  exclude  good  Christian  archi- 
tecture from  any  recognition.  In  spite  of  its 
efforts,  Gothic,  —  if  we  must  call  it  by  so  mean- 
ingless a  name  —  has  come  again  to  the  front, 

121 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

and  its  appearance  alone  is  enough  to  win  the 
victory.  So  long  as  it  was  laughed  or  scorned  into 
the  dark,  all  was  well,  but  publicity  settles  the 
question.  The  first  school  that  establishes  a  chair 
of  "Christian  Architecture"  is  the  one  that  will 
leap  to  the  front  beyond  all  rivals,  and  will  be- 
come the  great  agency  in  developing  a  logical  and 
living  architectural  style  for  America. 

Precisely  this,  though  the  concrete  school  was 
lacking,  is  what  happened  in  England,  and  I 
desire  to  note  most  briefly  the  course  of  events  in 
that  country  which  is  so  absolutely  ours  that 
Englishmen  and  Americans  are  simply  like  two 
brothers,  sojourning  in  different  lands,  but  tied 
together  by  all  the  heritage  of  family,  the  inde- 
structible chain  of  an  infinite  sequence  of  common 
ancestors.  We  sometimes  fail  to  realize  adequately 
that  American  history  goes  back  without  a  break 
through  the  Revolution  and  Plymouth  Rock,  to  the 
Elizabethan  age,  the  Reign  of  Terror  under 
Henry  VIII,  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  Magna  Charta, 
the  Conquest,  the  Heptarchy,  St.  Augustine  and 

122 


ARCHITECTURE    IN    ENGLAND 

Julius  Caesar.     We  are  not  the  Topsy  of  nations, 
but  the  heirs  of  British  history. 

EngHsh  civilization,  from  the  time  of  St.  Augus- 
tine, St.  Patrick,  and  St.  Columba,  was  the  child 
of  the  Christian  Church,  and  in  a  most  extraordi- 
nary degree  was  it  the  result  of  the  activity  of  the 
monastic  orders.  The  Benedictines  of  the  south, 
the  monks  of  lona,  St.  Cuthbert,  and  later  the 
Cistercians  of  the  north,  were  the  chief  agents  in 
civilizing  the  barbarous  races,  knitting  them  to- 
gether, preparing  them  to  support  such  defenders 
of  human  rights  and  absolute  justice  as  the  great 
prelates  St.  Anselm,  Stephen  Langton,  Theobald 
of  Canterbury,  and  St.  Thomas  a  Becket.  There- 
fore from  the  earliest  times  the  architecture  of 
England  was  monastic  in  its  inception  as  distin- 
guished from  the  essentially  episcopal  architecture 
of  the  Continent.  Until  the  Black  Death,  and 
after  in  a  lesser  degree,  the  monastic  orders  in 
England  were  the  civilizing,  educating,  and  char- 
itable powers  in  the  land.  There  were  many 
orders,  severally  independent  amongst  themselves; 
123 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

that  is,  each  house  was  a  sovereign  power  in  itself. 
Racially,  geologically,  and  climatically  the  many 
subdivisions  of  England  were  widely  different, 
therefore  English  architecture  became  infinitely 
varied  in  its  detail,  and  through  the  virtual  auton- 
omy of  the  hundreds  of  abbots,  almost  completely 
personal.  As  the  monks  gradually  took  to  them- 
selves, per  force,  vast  numbers  of  the  duties  we 
now  postulate  of  the  civil  state,  they  became  re- 
sponsible for  thousands  of  buildings  of  the  most 
varied  types,  not  abbeys,  priories,  and  cells  alone, 
but  parish  churches,  chapels,  chantries,  hospitals, 
asylums,  almshouses,  schools,  colleges,  castles, 
manors,  farmsteads,  and  barns.  The  styles  de- 
veloped by  the  abbots  and  their  subordinate 
priors,  through  the  great  guilds  of  masons  and 
craftsmen,  thus  percolated  down  through  every 
class  of  society,  and  the  result  was  perfect  unity 
of  impulse  expressed  through  infinite  variety  of 
personal  genius  and  inspiration.  Life  in  England 
from  the  Conquest  to  the  Suppression  was  crescent, 
and  as  well  turbulent  in  its  strenuous  onrushing 
124 


ARCHITECTURE    IN    ENGLAND 

from  one  vantage  point  to  the  next.  From  all 
over  the  Continent  impulses  of  every  kind  rained 
dov^rn  on  the  little  island;  now  the  Benedictines 
were  the  leaders,  now  the  Cistercians,  now  the 
Augustinians,  now  the  friars;  again  the  throne  was 
supreme,  then  the  barons,  then  the  knighthood 
and  gentry,  then  the  merchants.  There  never 
was  time  to  work  out  any  style  or  even  any  new 
motive  to  absolute  finality;  Gladstonbury  gave 
place  to  Rievaulx  and  Whitby,  these  to  York 
Abbey,  this  to  Gisburgh;  Gisburgh  yielded  to 
William  of  Wykeham  and  his  amazing  new  style, 
and  before  this  had  expressed  itself  in  any  com- 
plete and  consistent  abbey  or  cathedral,  Henry, 
the  Scourge  of  England,  hurled  the  whole  fabric 
of  splendid  civilization  crashing  to  the  ground, 
and  brought  in  the  awful  anarchy  of  the  reigns 
of  Edward  VI  and  Mary  I.  J 

From  this  two  things  follow  that  must  always 

be  considered  in  studying  English  Gothic:  first, 

the  incomplete  nature  of  each  epoch  of  the  style; 

second,  the  lamentable  fact  that  through  the  de- 

125 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

struction  of  the  monasteries  by  Henry's  cutthroats, 
Cromwell,  Layton,  London,  and  the  rest  of  the 
"visitors,"  and  his  new-made  and  most  evil 
"nobles,"  to  whom  the  fabulous  spoil  was  granted, 
most  of  the  very  noblest  examples  of  Gothic  in 
England  have  utterly  perished  from  the  earth. 

Bearing  this  first  fact  in  mind  we  can  under- 
stand why  there  never  was  any  one  final  and 
finished  "Gothic  style"  in  England,  i.e.,  any 
point  of  time  at  which  it  might  be  said,  "this 
marks  the  culmination  of  an  epoch,"  but  rather 
a  swift  sequence  of  brilliant  and  bewildering  epi- 
sodes wherein  were  commingled  masterpieces  and 
failures,  perfect  Gothic  and  sadly  imperfect.  In 
this  respect  France  and  England  stand  at  opposite 
poles,  and  to  my  mind  the  Gothic  of  England  was 
greater  and  more  Gothic,  even  if  far  less  final  in 
its  logical  perfection.  Gothic  as  a  style  main- 
tained, or  rather  rediscovered,  all  the  subtleties 
of  proportion  and  composition  inherent  in  Hellenic 
architecture.^ 'it  added  to  these  a  pure  logic  of 
construction  and  design  Rome  never  grasped,  and 
126 


ARCHITECTURE   IN    ENGLAND 

as  well  the  passion  for  beauty  in  an  infinity  of 
varied  forms  hitherto  undreamed  of  by  any  peoples 
of  any  race  or  clime;  finally,  as  the  culmination 
of  all,  it  exalted  to  the  summit  of  its  wonderful 
fabric,  personality,  demanding  of  every  man 
the  supreme  best  he  individually  could  give,  and 
opening  to  him  every  conceivable  source  of  in- 
spiration that  might  operate  to  this  end.  France 
stopped  short  at  logic  of  design  and  construction, 
and  her  Gothic  is  a  wonder  of  consummate  con- 
sistency; England  grasped  at  personality  as  the 
perfect  ideal,  and  achieved  it,  becoming  so  the 
truest  exponent  of  the  great  mediaeval  period  in 
building,  but  failing  always  to  bring  any  one 
phase  of  her  art  to  finality,  and  so  falling  under 
the  ban  of  those  the  logic  of  whose  minds  runs 
with  the  logic  of  the  great  builders  of  the  He  de 
France. 

Bearing  the  second  fact  in  mind,  we  can  see 
why  English  architecture  is  at  so  terrible  a  dis- 
advantage when  it  comes  to  the  test  of  archaeology; 
the  most  noble  buildings  are  gone,  utterly,  irre- 
127 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

mediably.  '  The  reign  of  terror  under  "  Henry  the 
Demon"  wiped  out  the  most  perfect  of  the  Gothic 
monuments  of  England,  and  by  some  strange 
fatahty  these  structures,  which  reached  the  level 
of  Paris,  Amiens,  and  Rheims,  were  the  very  ones 
to  go,  while  the  failures  like  Salisbury  only  too 
often  remained.  We  know  this  from  the  frag- 
ments of  Glastonbury,  Rievaulx,  Whitby,  York, 
and  Gisburgh  still  remaining.  What  must  have 
been  in  the  case  of  Beaulieu,  St.  Edmundsbury, 
Evesham,  and  Osney,  hardly  one  stone  of  which 
remains  upon  another,  is  only  matter  for  sorrowful 
speculation. 

The  Suppression,  and  the  half-century  of 
anarchy  coupled  with  the  swift  down-rushing 
towards  barbarism  that  followed,  brought  art  to 
an  end  in  England.  When  that  monumental 
statesman,  Elizabeth  Boleyn,  finally  succeeded  in 
bringing  something  of  order  out  of  chaos  and 
giving  civilization  another  chance,  there  was  no 
longer  either  a  powerful  Church,  a  popular  reli- 
gious instinct,  or  an  actual  material  demand  that 
128 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   ENGLAND 

might  act  as  an  incentive  toward  a  rebirth  of 
religious  art.  The  great  fire  of  London  under  the 
Stuarts  offered  a  purely  fictitious  impulse,  and  it 
was  met  by  a  purely  fictitious  style,  devoid  of  the 
slightest  Christian  spirit,  and,  as  well,  profoundly 
artificial  through  its  absolute  ignoring  of  the 
essential  connection  between  construction  and  de- 
sign. It  was  a  mode  of  enclosing  a  certain  space 
from  the  weather  and  giving  the  shell  a  specious 
grandiosity,  but  it  was  not  a  legitimate  architec- 
tural style.  From  then  on  was  merely  a  sorry 
tale  of  the  progressive  degradation  of  habits  in 
themselves  none  too  exalted,  and  so  matters  stood 
when  the  elder  Pugin  became  the  discoverer  of 
the  interesting  fact  that  England  had  once  had  a 
national  Christian  architecture.  The  news  spread 
like  wildfire.  It  was  synchronous  with  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  revelation  of  the  old-time  glory  of  British 
character  and  British  history,  and  the  still  greater 
revelation  of  Pusey,  Newman,  and  the  Tractarians 
that  England  once  had  had  a  national.  Catholic, 
and  virile  Church,  the  dry  bones  of  which  still 
129 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

remained,  and  might  perchance  be  raised  up  into 
a  new  life,  a  fact  somewhat  forgotten  since  the 
murder,  two  centuries  before,  of  Archbishop  Laud. 

Reform  was  in  the  air,  memory  was  at  work 
again,  imagination  roused  itself  from  its  long 
sleep,  and  art  and  poetry  came  out  into  a  new 
day.  But  architecture  alone  concerns  us  here, 
so  it  is  enough  to  note  the  fact  that  the  "Gothic 
Revival"  in  England  was  not  a  sport  of  jaded 
fashion,  but  an  intrinsic  part  of  a  great  movement 
that  is  even  now  working  steadily  towards  a  des- 
tiny, the  nature  of  which  we  can  only  conjecture. 

The  history  of  the  architectural  "counter-refor- 
mation" was  about  what  we  should  expect.  The 
younger  Pugin,  the  first  Gilbert  Scott,  Street, 
Pearson,  saw  at  first  only  archaeological  possibili- 
ties; the  thirteenth  century  was  the  idol  of  the 
hour,  and  duplication  of  detail,  copying  with 
scrupulous  exactness,  the  ritual  of  its  worship. 
From  this  grew  up  on  the  one  hand  the  Markheim 
of  "Victorian  Gothic,"  on  the  other  the  absurdities 
of  "carpenter's  Gothic."  Neither  was  really 
130 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   ENGLAND 

Gothic  at  all;  but  while  the  latter  was  the  indelible 
mark  of  a  social  barbarism  and  debasement  that 
would  have  disgraced  the  Maories  of  New  Zealand 
and  the  savages  of  Patagonia,  the  former  was  not 
only  vastly  in  advance  of  anything  that  had  pre- 
ceded it  for  two  hundred  years,  it  was  really 
good  in  itself;  not  very  good,  to  be  sure,  but 
earnest,  enthusiastic,  and  possessed  of  no  small 
degree  of  fine  proportion  and  noble  and  original 
composition.  Of  course  its  ornament,  particu- 
larly its  carving,  was  quite  impossible,  but  only 
a  social  revolution  that  will  bring  back  the  guilds, 
the  methods,  and  the  faith  of  the  middle  ages  will 
give  us  back  our  heritage  of  architectural  sculp- 
ture. Until  that  day  it  is  better  to  deal  with 
chiselled  mouldings,  or  even  the  contemporary 
jungle  of  acanthus. 

When  Mr.  Bodley  entered  the  fight  he  brought 
in  a  new  element;  not  only  did  he  seek  his  inspira- 
tion largely  from  the  fourteenth  century,  he  as 
well  began  to  indicate  the  great,  underlying  laws 
of  the  Christian  style  that  run  changelessly  through 
131 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

all  Gothic  building  from  the  thirteenth  century 
until  the  end.  Others  had  worked  in  the  style, 
he  thought  in  it,  and  so  did  those  that  came  after 
him;  as  a  result  his  work  had  the  spirit  and  the 
life  as  well  as  the  mouldings  and  the  centring  of 
arches.  By  this  time,  also,  a  certain  section  of 
the  people  had  begim  to  think  Gothic;  Scott  and 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  Pusey,  Newman,  and 
Manning,  Ruskin,  Turner,  and  Tennyson,  were 
making  themselves  felt.  They  had  brought  into 
existence,  or  the  Zeit-geist  had  done  it  for  them, 
such  absolute  yet  varied  types  of  the  true  artistic 
Goth  as  William  Morris,  Dante  Rossetti,  and 
Henry  Irving.  "Strawberry  Hill  Gothic"  would 
no  longer  do,  for  the  consciousness  had  grown  up 
that  the  new  school  of  architecture  was  supremely 
foolish  if  it  did  not  express  an  identical  impulse 
in  human  life,  and  this  impulse  proved  as  soon 
as  it  arrived  that  shams  and  lies  and  affectations 
and  stage  scenery  were  the  final  negation  of  the 
spirit  of  life  that  had  made  mediaeval  architecture 
possible,  and  that  had  come  again  into  the  world, 
132 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   ENGLAND 

not  as  a  revenant,  but  as  the  product  of  a  resur- 
rection. 

Gradually  the  consciousness  grew  up  that  good 
architecture  and  sound  civilization  did  not  die  of 
inanition  during  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII,  but  that 
they  were  done  to  death  in  most  untimely  fashion 
and  in  the  strength  of  their  mature  manhood,  and 
so  men  said,  "Go  to,  we  will  return  to  the  year 
1537,  take  up  the  story  where  it  was  then  brought 
to  a  violent  end,  and  go  on  thence,  ignoring  for 
all  practical  purposes  the  long  interregnum  be- 
tween then  and  now."  The  leader  in  this  new 
crusade  for  the  "redemption  of  the  holy  places" 
of  architecture  was  John  Sedding,  and  short  as 
was  his  life,  he  turned  the  whole  stream  of  ten- 
dency into  new  channels.  Perpendicular  Gothic 
became  the  enormous  quarry  from  which  inspira- 
tion was  to  be  had  for  the  digging,  and  "develop- 
ment" the  slogan  of  the  war.  The  results  were 
brilliant  and  amazing;  a  score  of  able  men  allied 
themselves  with  the  cause,  and  for  ten  years  the 
output  of  vital,  spontaneous,  exhilarating,  exquisite 
133 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

work  was  almost  incredible.  I  shall  not  attempt 
to  give  a  list  of  the  names  of  those  associated  with 
this  splendid  outburst  of  genius,  for  they  are  legion. 

"Last  stage  of  all"  came  the  inevitable  — 
though  I  believe  temporary  —  breakdown.  Sed- 
ding  died,  and  many  of  his  disciples  got  out  of 
hand.  "Development"  was  too  fast  and  too 
facile;  it  began  to  see  nothing  but  ingenuity  before 
it;  the  great  principles  of  Gothic  were  forgotten 
in  the  rush,  and  there  came  a  carnival  of  riotous 
invention.  Bentley,  in  some  ways  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  all  the  new  Goths  of  England,  was 
forced  into  an  alien  style  for  his  hugest  monument, 
and  presently  died,  cut  off  like  Sedding  and 
Gilbert  Scott  II  long  before  his  time.  Had  he 
lived,  he  might  have  stemmed  the  tide. 

What  remains?  Is  the  cause  lost?  Has  Eng- 
lish architecture  lived  through  in  seventy-five  years 
a  life  identical  with  that  which  consumed  four 
centuries  in  its  earlier  development?  Has  the 
Gothic  Restoration  come  to  an  end?  On  the 
contrary,  it  has  only  begun.  One  experiment 
134 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   ENGLAND 

after  another  has  been  tried,  the  re-creation  of 
the  thirteenth,  the  fourteenth,  and  the  fifteenth 
centuries;  each  has  been  only  partially  successful, 
and  for  two  reasons:  first,  because  in  each  case 
there  was  too  much  dependence  on  archaeology 
and  on  the  minutiae  of  art,  not  enough  on  sound 
and  basic  principles;  second,  because  the  architects 
were  far  in  advance  of  society,  and  even  in  the 
case  of  the  Church  (though  here  in  less  measure 
than  elsewhere)  were  trying  to  drag  the  world  up 
to  a  level  for  which  it  was  not  prepared.  The 
result  was  a  state  of  things  that  was  bad  from  an 
economic  standpoint:  the  supply  was  creating  the 
demand.  There  are  signs  now,  clear  and  unmis- 
takable, that  all  is  reversed;  the  demand  exists, 
and  it  must  inevitably  create  the  supply.  Chris- 
tian society,  in  England  at  least,  will  tolerate  no 
return  to  classicism,  whether  Italian,  French,  or 
English.  It  is  now  acquiring  something  to  express 
which  can  only  be  accurately  voiced  by  some  new 
mode  of  its  old  national  style.  To  fill  this  demand, 
architects  will  return,  not  to  one  special  period, 
135 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

but  to  all:  from  the  thirteenth  century  they  will 
learn  the  laws  of  proportion,  relation,  composition, 
and  restraint;  from  the  fourteenth,  breadth,  large- 
ness, grasp  of  mass,  grouping  of  light  and  shade; 
from  the  fifteenth,  freedom,  fearlessness,  exuber- 
ance of  imagination,  adaptation  to  new  and  con- 
stantly changing  requirements;  from  the  three 
centuries  taken  together,  seriousness  of  purpose, 
healthy  joy  in  creation,  the  passion  for  pure 
beauty,  and  a  sane,  manly,  religious  faith,  confi- 
dent and  unashamed.  J 

In  Gilbert  Scott  III  and  his  Liverpool  Cathe- 
dral is  perhaps  an  indication  of  this  latest  and 
most  lasting  phase  of  the  new  life  in  English 
architecture. 


136 


/ 


THE   DEVELOPMENT  OF   ECCLE- 
SIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 
IN  AMERICA 


/ 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  ECCLESIAS- 
TICAL ARCHITECTURE  IN 
AMERICA 

T^EW  of  the  joys  of  the  spirit  are  more  thor- 
^  oughly  pleasurable  than  the  indulgence  in 
vain  imaginings  as  to  what  might  have  happened 
had  matters  otherwise  befallen:  if  Luther  had 
possessed  a  more  perfect  control  of  his  temper; 
if  Henry  VHI  had  been  less  expensive  in  his  tastes 
and  less  expansive  in  his  marital  impulses;  if 
Oliver  Cromwell  had  been  permitted  to  emigrate 
to  America  when  still  a  young  man;  if  Blucher 
had  failed  to  come  up  in  time  at  Waterloo;  if 
Jackson  had  not  fallen  at  Chancellorsville;  if  the 
"Maine"  had  sailed  scathless  from  Havana  Har- 
bour; if  Russia  had  refrained  from  robbing  Japan 
of  Port  Arthur  ten  years  ago. 

The    vistas    opened   by    each   supposition    are 
illimitable,    and    the    possible   list    is    practically 
139 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

without  bounds.  Add  yet  another:  suppose  the 
exodus  from  England  "for  conscience'  sake"  had 
been  dated  just  a  century  before.  Assume  that 
the  revolt  had  been  against  the  last  Henry  of  the 
house  of  Tudor  instead  of  against  the  first  James 
of  the  house  of  Stuart.  There  was  infinitely 
greater  cause,  for  in  the  early  fifteens  a  war  to 
the  death  was  going  on  between  the  true  and  the 
false,  the  sane  and  the  mad,  exponents  of  the 
Renaissance.  By  1520  the  cause  of  the  sound 
defenders  of  the  "new  learning"  was  already  lost, 
and  it  was  quite  evident  that  the  victory  would  lie 
with  Henry,  Cranmer,  and  Cromwell,  not  Avith 
Archbishop  Warham,  Bishop  Fisher,  Sir  Thomas 
More,  Dean  Colet  and  Erasmus. 

Now  suppose  that  then  such  pilgrims  as  these 
had  forsaken  a  crumbling  civilization  and  come 
out  to  preserve  in  the  new  world  the  exalted 
traditions  and  principles  of  Mediaevalism,  revivi- 
fied by  all  that  was  good  in  the  Renaissance. 
Warham  was  dead,  and  Erasmus,  before  the  great 
debdcle,  but  there  were  many  indeed  who  would 
140 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   AMERICA 

have  followed  More  and  Fisher,  and  what  might 
they  not  have  accomplished?  One  thing  very 
surely:  they  would  have  brought  to  the  new  world 
all  the  architectural  force  and  fire  that  were  still 
extant  when  the  sixteenth  century  began  its  course, 
and  we  should  have  had  here,  as  our  dearest 
artistic  treasures,  churches  built  in  the  great  Chris- 
tian style,  which  by  then"  beauty  might  have 
proved  a  bulwark  against  the  subsequent  fashions 
that  were  to  arise  in  England  when  the  foundations 
of  society  had  been  overturned,  and  art,  as  an 
instinct,  had  ceased  to  be  an  appanage  of  the 
race. 

Well,  the  exodus  was  delayed  another  hundred 
years.  More  went  to  the  block,  the  Benedictine 
abbots  to  the  scaffold,  and  their  principles  with 
them.  When  at  last  the  transfer  from  East  to 
West  was  made,  there  was  nothing  left  of  the 
architectural  tradition,  and  the  fashion  of  building 
that  was  transplanted  to  America  was  that  which 
had  been  devised  by  ingenious  men  as  a  plausible 
exponent  of  the  new  reign  of  classical  "culture." 
141 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

In  the  recrudescence,  some  years  ago,  of  loud 
admiration  for  "Colonial,"  or,  as  it  should  be 
called,  "Georgian"  architecture,  there  was,  I 
think,  a  failure  sufficiently  to  analyze  emotions. 
The  building  fashion  of  the  seventies  and  early 
eighties  was  of  course  unendurable,  and  the  frank 
simplicity  and  unquestioned  good  taste  in  detail 
of  the  early  eighteenth-century  work  was  a  wel- 
come relief  from  the  riotous  reign  of  the  jig  saw. 
A  fine  pride  in  history  was  coming  into  being,  and 
we  confused  archseology  and  the  historic  sentiment 
with  artistic  assent.  The  building  that  had  taken 
place  in  what  are  now  the  United  States  up  to 
the  Revolution  was  worthy  of  all  respect.  It 
possessed  certain  elements  in  its  domestic  and 
civil  aspects  that  were  sound  and  true;  it  was  quite 
as  good  as,  if  not  better  than,  what  was  being 
done  at  the  time  in  England,  for  it  was  frank  and 
simple  and  restrained;  but  this  fact  should  not 
blind  us  to  that  other  of  equal  importance,  viz., 
that  the  good  was  due  to  a  dying  instinct  for 
good  taste,  not  to  the  style  itself,  which  really 
142 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   AMERICA 

possessed  no  qualities  of  sound  principle  or  abso- 
lute beauty.  It  was  all  artifice  and  imitation; 
many  of  its  best  qualities  were  the  result  of  tricks 
of  memory;  sense  of  scale  was  curiously  persistent, 
but  of  feeling  for  proportion  and  composition  there 
was  little,  while  the  sense  of  organic  relationship 
had  utterly  disappeared. 

We  feel  this  particularly  in  the  church  work  of 
the  Colonial  period.  Little  from  the  seventeenth 
century  remains,  —  a  crag  at  Jamestown,  one  or 
two  "Swedish"  churches  in  Delaware,  St.  Luke's, 
Smithfield,  Va.,  this  last  dating  from  1632,  and 
retaining  a  pathetic  reminiscence  of  Gothic  in  its 
square  tower,  stepped  buttresses,  and  pointed 
windows.  The  churches  and  meeting-houses  of 
the  eighteenth  century  are  legion,  but  whether 
they  are  of  the  rough,  country  type  so  familiar  to 
us  in  the  villages  of  the  East  and  South,  of  the 
cautious  and  thrifty  fashion  shown  in  Christ 
Church,  Boston,  or  whether  they  approach  the 
elaborate  and  magnificent,  as  in  Christ  Church, 
Philadelphia,  they  are  all  singularly  artificial  and 
143 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

unimaginative:  a  square  room  with  galleries  on 
three  sides,  with  or  without  Corinthian  columns 
of  wood,  silly  entablatures,  and  groined  vaults  of 
lath  and  plaster.  Sometimes  a  massive  classical 
portico  of  flimsy  construction  is  backed  up  against 
one  end  of  the  primal  cube,  and  almost  invariably 
an  imposing  tower,  of  foolishly  diminishing  stages, 
telescopes  itself  into  the  upper  air.  It  is  the 
"volapuk"  of  Wren  and  Inigo  Jones  and  their 
school  retranslated  into  the  vernacular-,  nothing 
much  remaining  but  a  very  pretty  taste  in  delicate 
detail  and  the  profound  and  underlying  devotion 
to  economical  makeshifts. 

With  the  early  nineteenth  century  came  several 
more  educated  builders,  and  an  influx  of  spirit 
from  France  and  England.  Latrobe,  Thornton, 
Bulfinch,  McComb,  Peter  Harrison,  and  scores  of 
others  did  their  best  to  improve  proportions  and 
develop  design,  though  always  on  the  established 
lines.  Jefferson,  hot  with  the  new  French  passion 
for  "pure  classic,"  brought  in  the  most  absurd 
fashion  of  all,  that  of  copying  Greek  and  Roman 
144 


ARCHITECTURE    IN    AMERICA 

temples  in  economical  materials,  and  making  them 
do  service  as  Christian  churches.  It  would  seem 
that  the  reign  of  pure  pretence  could  go  no  further, 
but  there  was  one  step,  the  evidences  of  which 
still  remain,  viz.,  the  building  of  a  clapboard 
shanty  and  the  applying  to  the  front  of  a  ponderous 
"Doric"  portico  with  pillars  four  feet  in  diameter 
and  built  up  of  seven-eighths  inch  boards  nailed 
together,  the  whole  being  painted  white,  green 
blinds  shading  the  lofty  windows  in  the  slab 
sides. 

Here  we  stood  about  1835,  or  lay,  rather,  pros- 
trate in  our  total  collapse  from  the  days  of  Ralph 
of  Glastonbury,  William  of  Canterbury,  and  Wil- 
liam of  Wykeham.  Thus  far  had  we  fallen  from 
the  fifteenth  to  the  nineteenth  century;  from 
Gloucester  cathedral  to  St.  Paul's,  Boston. 

There  was  no  pit  of  fm"ther  fall,  and  radical 
change  was  inevitable.  The  Gothic  revival  had 
begun  in  England  under  the  Pugins,  and  it 
promptly  found  its  echo  here.  I  should  like  to 
know  which  was  the  first  church  that  showed  a 
145 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

dawning  consciousness  of  Gothic  as  the  Christian 
style.  St.  Stephen's,  Philadelphia  (1822),  Christ 
Church,  Louisville,  Ky.  (1823),  and  St.  Luke's 
Rochester  (1824),  were  certainly  amongst  the 
pioneers.  So  ingrained  had  become  the  spirit  of 
architectural  deceit  and  artistic  substitution,  the 
first  "Gothic"  work  was  just  as  specious  and 
silly  as  that  which  it  had  come  to  destroy.  The 
general  forms  and  the  materials  remained  the 
same,  the  windows  became  pointed  and  took  to 
themselves  ridiculous  muUions  and  grotesque  tra- 
cery of  patched-up  wood;  sharp  spikes  took  the 
place  of  balls  and  urns;  shapeless  chunks  of  pine 
were  split  out  and  nailed  on  all  available  angles 
in  simulation  of  crocketing;  angled  spires  took 
the  place  of  the  honoured  telescope  effects.  Other- 
wise there  was  no  change.  Honestly,  I  suppose 
there  is  no  more  awful  evidence  of  rampant  bar- 
barism than  that  which  exists  in  the  architecture 
of  the  United  States  between  the  years  1820  and 
1840. 
Then  came  Upjohn,  a  great  man,  a  sound 
146 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   AMERICA 

architect,  a  leader  when  the  time  was  clamorous 
for  such  an  one.  Trinity  Church,  New  York, 
marks  the  end  of  an  era,  the  birth  of  an  epoch. 
Upjohn  knew  what  Gothic  meant,  he  felt  it  as  an 
inspiration,  he  began  at  the  right  end  and  he  fixed 
a  style  for  three  generations.  Of  course  nothing 
he  did  can  be  compared  in  any  way  with  the 
product  of  "the  great  thousand  years,"  but  the 
fault  was  not  his.  By  some  miracle  he  got  Gothic 
feeling  into  his  work,  and  induced  the  backward 
public  to  accept  it.  From  the  moment  Trinity 
was  built,  the  reign  of  paganism  was  at  an  end. 

Also  he  raised  up  a  line  of  able  disciples  that 
carried  on  his  work  year  after  year:  Renwick,  who 
loved  French  Gothic  as  Upjohn  loved  English; 
Upjohn  the  younger.  Withers,  Congdon,  and  many 
others  of  the  same  enthusiasm,  though  possibly 
less  well  known.  The  greater  work  of  these  men 
fails  at  many  points,  for  it  is  too  studiously  imita- 
tive, but  in  their  smaller  churches  there  is  frank 
simplicity,  grave  directness,  and,  above  all,  sin- 
cerity. 

147 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

So  complete  had  been  the  downfall  of  so-called 
classical  methods  in  church  design,  so  strong  and 
permanently  good  had  been  the  style  developed  in 
its  place,  it  really  might  have  seemed  that  the  day 
of  good  building  had  begun.  There  was  one  fact, 
however,  that  showed  how  unstable  was  the  basis 
on  which  architecture  was  building,  —  the  life  did 
not  extend  beyond  the  ecclesiastical  province. 
From  1830  to  1880  domestic  architecture  in  the 
United  States  became,  and  continued  to  be,  worse 
than  at  any  time  or  in  any  place  recorded  in  history, 
while  the  public  architecture  of  the  time  is  well 
represented  by  the  awful  output  of  the  govern- 
ment's pet,  the  late  Mr.  Mullet.  There  was  no 
general  recognition  of  the  depravity  of  the  situa- 
tion; here,  as  in  England,  a  few  strong  men,  with 
Upjohn  as  leader,  had  furnished  a  supply,  and  so 
brought  into  existence  a  fictitious  demand.  I  say 
"fictitious,"  for  the  Church  was  quite  as  likely  to 
accept  a  perfectly  awful  piece  of  work,  so  long  as 
it  called  itself  "Gothic,"  as  it  was  to  employ 
Upjohn  or  Ren  wick  or  Congdon.  Now  the  first 
148 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   AMERICA 

leaders  were  getting  old;  Congdon,  Haight,  and 
others  were  still  operative,  but  a  restlessness  de- 
veloped, a  demand  for  something  new.  Just  at 
this  crisis  came  the  sudden  weakening,  both  in 
England  and  America,  which  may,  I  think,  be 
traced  in  a  measure  to  the  writings  of  John  Ruskin. 
Here  was  a  man  of  stupefying  ability,  an  ex- 
traordinary species  of  artistic  Calvinist;  invincibly 
dogmatic,  narrow  as  Geneva,  honest,  enthusiastic, 
inspiring,  and  quite  the  most  unreliable  critic  and 
exponent  of  architecture  that  ever  lived,  but  gifted 
with  a  facility  in  the  use  of  perfectly  convincing  lan- 
guage such  as  is  granted  to  few  men  in  any  given 
thousand  years.  Fired  by  his  inflammatory  rhet- 
oric, Blomfield,  Butterfield,  and  others  in  England, 
and  a  particular  group  in  America,  turned  to  detail 
and  decoration,  the  use  of  coloured  bricks  and  terra 
cotta,  stone  inlay,  naturalistic  carving,  metal  work, 
as  the  essentials  in  constructive  art,  abandoning 
the  quest  for  efif active  composition,  thoughtful 
proportion,  and  established  precedents  that  had 
characterized  the  work  of  their  immediate  prede- 
149 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

cessors.  Potter,  Eidlitz,  Sturgis,  Cummings,  Fur- 
ness,  and  Hunt,  all  began  the  laudable  labour  of 
developing  Gothic  on  new  lines,  and  others  fol- 
lowed them  —  at  a  distance  —  as  has  always  been 
and  always  will  be  the  case.  To  me  it  seems  that 
of  this  school  Cummings  alone  succeeded  to  any 
marked  degree;  his  New  Old  South  Church  in 
Boston,  while  poor  in  mass  and  proportion,  being 
a  very  remarkable  example  of  the  enthusiastic  and 
conscientious  study  of  creative  design,  particularly 
in  detail  and  decoration. 

The  new  work  did  not  meet  the  demand,  how- 
ever; the  movement  was  discredited  for  a  while 
both  in  England  and  America,  and  at  the  psycho- 
logical moment  Richardson  burst  on  the  land  with 
his  Trinity  Church  in  Boston.  He  had  begun 
his  career  on  established  Gothic  lines;  suddenly 
Trinity  leaped  from  his  amazing  brain,  and  from 
that  moment  the  Gothic  structure,  already  toppling 
dangerously,  was  doomed  to  complete  destruction. 

Richardson  was  certainly  an  architect  to  be 
ranked  with  the  immortals.  He  grasped  his  art 
150 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   AMERICA 

with  both  hands;  he  devoured  and  assimilated  it 
as  Michael  Angelo  sculpture,  as  Leonardo  paint- 
ing, as  Wagner  music,  as  Browning  poetry.  He 
forged  his  mighty  way  across  his  brief  span  of 
years,  drawing  the  continent  after  him;  but  when 
he  died  the  style  he  had  made  his  own  died  also, 
and  in  ten  years  it  had  become  a  byword,  not 
because  the  men  he  had  influenced  were  weak 
men,  —  they  are  amongst  the  strongest  who  are 
practising  to-day,  —  but  simply  because  his  was 
an  alien  style,  out  of  touch  with  our  race  and  time, 
intrinsically  aloof  from  our  blood  and  impossible 
of  ethnic  adaptation.  The  principles  he  fought 
for  are  established,  for  they  are  the  universal  laws 
that  underlie  all  good  architecture,  classic  or 
Gothic.  The  language  in  which  they  were  clothed 
was  an  accident,  ephemeral  and  transitory. 

In  ten  years  we  had  turned  in  derision  from 
those  who  were  making  a  mock  of  "  Romanesque," 
and  the  question  came,  what  next?  It  was 
promptly  answered.  While  we  had  been  toiling 
over  random  ashlar,  vast  voussoirs,  and  cavernous 
151 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

reveals,  Bodley  and  Sedding  had  been  solving  the 
final  problem  in  England,  and  their  revelation 
was  brought  to  us  by  several  men,  chief  of  whom 
is  Mr.  Vaughan.  Mr.  Haight  and  ]Mr.  Congdon 
had  held  steadfastly  to  their  ideals  through  the 
Richardsonian  era,  as  had  others.  Mr.  Gibson 
came  forward  with  his  scheme  for  Albany  Cathe- 
dral, and  of  a  sudden  sprung  as  it  were  out  of  the 
ground  half  a  dozen  young  firms  who  began  to 
work  in  Gothic,  and  think  in  it  as  well.  Simul- 
taneously another  group  began  to  come  back  from 
Paris  with  the  new  gospel  according  to  the  Beaux 
Arts,  but  the  style  they  brought  with  them  was  so 
manifestly  unsuited  for  religious  purposes  that  they 
took  no  interest  in  this  field  of  design,  which  so 
was  handed  over  in  toto  to  the  "Gothic  crowd." 

And  so  matters  stand  to-day,  the  field  of  archi- 
tecture unhappily  divided  into  two  camps,  secular 
and  ecclesiastical,  the  style  of  each  intolerant  ot 
the  other,  and,  it  would  appear,  impossible  of 
compromise  or  amalgamation. 

I  do  not  propose  to  enter  here  into  a  discussion 
152 


ARCHITECTURE    IN    AMERICA 

of  the  work  done  by  the  new  school  of  Gothicists 
that  rose  into  view  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  nor  yet  to  marshal  their  names  in 
a  catalogue.  It  would  be  impossible,  and  besides 
we  are  even  now  in  the  midst  of  things;  the  work 
of  restoring  and  rivivifying  Gothic  is  proceeding 
with  leaps  and  bounds,  and  it  is  too  soon  to  form 
correct  judgments  or  venture  on  forecasts.  Death 
has  removed  many,  and  the  cause  is  weakened 
thereby.  Halsey  Wood  we  could  ill  spare;  he 
thought  Gothic  as  instinctively  as  the  best  thir- 
teenth-century master-mason  of  them  all.  Some- 
times his  passionate  enthusiasm  seemed  almost  to 
drive  him  mad,  but  he  had  it  in  him  to  a  most 
astounding  degree,  and  when  he  died,  religious 
architecture  staggered  under  the  blow.  And  no 
man  ever  loved  Gothic  and  worked  for  its  victory 
more  strenuously  than  Charles  Francis  Wentworth. 
I  speak  here  of  what  I  know.  John  Stewardson 
and  Walter  Cope  were  two  men  whose  importance 
in  the  cause  of  sound  art  cannot  possibly  be  over- 
estimated, and  Henry  Randall,  word  of  whose 
153 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

untimely  death  has  only  just  come  to  us:  we  halt 
blind  and  dumb  before  the  mystery  of  death  that 
takes  these  when  scores  of  others  could  better  have 
been  spared.  Love  and  devotion,  enthusiasm  and 
faith  lay  behind  all  these  men  as  the  mainspring 
of  their  activity,  and  without  these  things  nothing 
whatever  can  be  done. 

Well,  we  must  fight  on  with  those  that  are  left, 
and  they  are  neither  few  in  number  nor  inadequate 
in  power.  Where  they  come  from  heaven  knows. 
Not  from  the  schools,  for  the  very  word  "  Gothic  " 
is  anathema  there.  They  must  have  sprung  up 
out  of  the  persistent  soil  of  inextinguishable  inher- 
itance, and  under  the  sun  of  dawning  spirituality. 
They  exist,  however,  in  spite  of  fate  and  Paris, 
and  they  can't  be  ridiculed  into  desuetude,  for 
they  work  on  principle;  they  can't  be  starved  into 
abeyance,  for  the  Church  exists,  taking  on  a  new 
lease  of  life  since  the  close  of  the  century  that 
fondly  boasted  its  ability  to  do  it  to  death,  and 
for  the  Church  there  is  one  language  and  one  only. 

But  this  is  not  the  justification  of  Gothic,  the 
154 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   AMERICA 

mere  fact  that  it  happens  to  be  the  only  adequate 
language  for  organized  Christianity;  of  course  it 
is  that,  and  there  would  always  have  to  be  men 
who  could  build  churches,  but  your  true  Goth 
does  not  look  on  architecture  as  a  kind  of  esthetic 
department  store.  "  College  Buildings  ?  You  will 
find  a  complete  line  of  Greco-Georgian  articles 
down  the  alley  to  the  right.  Yes,  madam,  great 
sale  of  slightly  shopworn  Romanesque  remnants 
now  going  on:  down-stairs,  turn  to  the  left.  Post- 
offices?  Certainly,  an  enormous  stock  with  con- 
stant accessions,  all  guaranteed  real  Renaissance: 
Tailoring  department,  second  floor.  No,  madam, 
we  do  not  carry  any  chateauesque  Fifth  Avenue 
palaces  now;  no  call  for  them.  M.  Cartouche  will 
fit  you  splendidly,  however,  if  you  desire  quite  the 
latest  thing  just  from  Paris;  up  one  flight,  entire 
floor.  An  office  building?  We  have  the  finest 
line  on  earth,  patent,  extension  styles,  fitted  while 
you  wait;  take  the  elevator  to  the  thirty-second 
floor.  Churches?  Yes,  sir,  we  cater  especially 
to  the  Cloth,  all  real  Gothic  and  twenty  yards 
155 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

high,  thirteenth,  fourteenth,  fifteenth  century, 
French,  Spanish,  EngHsh:  take  the  subway  to 
the  mediaeval  annex."  No,  your  zealous  Goth 
believes  there  is  only  one  style  fit  for  Christians, 
and  that  is  Gothic;  but  nine  times  out  of  ten,  if 
you  ask  him  you  will  find  that  what  he  means  by 
Gothic  is  something  very  different  to,  and  far  less 
archaeological  than,  what  you  had  supposed. 

Let  me  try  to  put  into  a  few  words  the  creed  of 
the  Gothicist.  He  believes  these  things:  First, 
that  there  are  certain  laws  impossible  to  put  into 
words  (but  as  easily  distinguished  as  a  harmony 
from  a  discord  in  music),  laws  of  proportion, 
composition,  organic  relation  and  development, 
that  are  fundamental,  and  that  these  laws  underlie 
all  good  architecture  and  are  exactly  and  finally 
the  same,  whether  the  work  is  Greek,  Roman, 
Gothic,  Japanese,  or  Ecoledesbeauxartesque;  sec- 
ond, that  archjeology  isn't  architecture,  imitation 
design,  or  orders  and  mouldings,  whether  jclaseic  \ 
or  Gothic,  a  result  of  divine  revelation.  /  He  "holds  i\^ 
that  architecture  is  a  language,  not  a  sequence  of 
156 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   AMERICA 

fads,  and  that  style  is  nonsense  unless  it  develops 
from  historical  and  racial  associations,  expresses 
construction,  function,  and  contemporary  ideas, 
uses  honest  materials  honestly,  and  is  intrinsically 
beautiful,  both  in  detail  and  as  a  whole;  third, 
that  Greek  and  Roman  and  early  Renaissance  and 
modern  French  architecture  possess  many  elements 
of  pure  beauty,  but  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  this 
beauty  is  actually  inferior  in  every  particular  to 
that  which  was  evolved  during  the  great  thousand 
years  of  Christian  civilization  from  600  to  1600 
A.D.,  Gothic,  so  called,  not  only  possessing  in  its 
integrity  the  whole  body  of  classical  tradition  of 
proportion,  composition,  and  development,  but 
having  evolved  as  well  detail,  mouldings,  and 
carved  ornament  immeasurably  more  beautiful 
in  every  particular  than  anything  ever  produced  in 
earlier  times;  fourth,  that  we  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  and  the  twentieth  century  have  been  cut  ofif 
from  the  classical  succession  by  ten  centuries  of 
splendid  racial  development  with  its  own  supreme 
and  perfect  mode  of  artistic  expression;  that  the 
157 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

sixteenth-century  break  was  temporary  only,  and 
episodal;  that  the  style  then  intruded  was  one  of 
a  kind  of  cheap  paganism,  and  that  now,  as  we 
awake  again  to  higher  ideals,  we  are  bound  in 
consistency  to  reject  the  affected  "classic"  that 
was  the  work  of  the  neo-paganism  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  return  to  our  own  racial  style  that 
was  developed  while  we  were  yet  consistent  Chris- 
tians. 

The  modern  Goth  is  the  defender  of  Christian 
civilization  against  paganism.  He  is  not  in  the 
least  ashamed  to  declare  himself  a  Christian  and 
a  Catholic.  The  moment  he  began  to  serve  the 
Church  in  his  profession  he  realized  that  it  was 
nonsense  to  think  of  any  form  of  classical  archi- 
tecture as  a  fitting  material  expression  thereof; 
first,  because  Christianity  had  definitely  rejected 
it  after  a  fair  trial,  and  had  taken  a  thousand  years 
to  develop  a  substitute,  had  succedeed  in  producing 
a  style  retaining  every  basic  principle  of  sound 
design,  while  expressing  in  every  detail  the  whole 
body  of  the  Christian  faith  with  an  unheard  of 
158 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   AMERICA 

degree  of  delicacy,  and  had  held  to  this  style  until 
chaos  and  ruin  and  revolution  wrecked  everything 
at  the  time  of  the  Reformation;  second,  because 
Renaissance  architecture  bears  the  mark  of  the 
Beast,  being  the  style  developed  in  the  sixteenth 
century  to  voice  accurately  that  element  in  the 
Renaissance  which  triumphed  over  all  that  was 
sane,  sound,  and  Christian  in  the  movement,  and  is 
fitting  only  for  such  organizations,  if  they  still 
exist,  which  embody  all  the  evils  of  paganism 
without  its  virtues,  and  cloak  beneath  a  Christian 
vesture  contempt  of  God,  denial  of  law,  and  a 
grinning  negation  of  any  essential  difference  be- 
tween right  and  wrong. 

It  all  began  with  the  question  of  rightly  express- 
ing the  Church  through  architectural  forms;  but 
it  went  further,  for  in  the  study  of  principles  and 
affinities  it  gradually  dawned  on  the  student  that 
the  whole  question  of  modern  society  was  in- 
volved. On  the  one  hand  was  the  logical  outcome 
of  the  neo-paganism  of  the  sixteenth  century,  — 
materialism,  savage  individualism,  political  abso- 
159 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

lutism  transferred  from  the  tyrant  to  the  oHgarchy 
of  partisan  bosses,  financial  brigandage,  selfish 
and  unprincipled  capital  in  a  death  grapple  with 
selfish  and  unprincipled  labour,  social  corruption, 
domestic  immorality,  and  graft;  on  the  other, 
religion,  recrudescent,  fighting  steadily  against 
the  powers  of  hell.  From  being  merely  the  only 
logical  and  consistent  expression  of  an  organized 
Christianity  that  simply  refused  to  be  killed,  but 
impossible  of  employment  elsewhere,  Gothic  sud- 
denly became  a  synonym  for  the  fight  of  Christian 
civilization  against  the  paganism  in  society,  politics, 
trade,  industry,  and  finance,  so  exquisitely  ex- 
pressed by  the  Renaissance  style  it  had  developed 
early  in  the  game  for  this  particular  purpose. 
The  Goth  believes,  therefore,  that  he  insults  the 
Church  if  he  tries  to  cloak  her  glory  in  the  vesture 
of  heathendom.  There  is  one  Christian  style  and 
only  one;  it  did  not  die  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
it  only  retreated  to  the  sanctuary  of  the  Island  of 
Avalon  with  King  Arthur  and  all  the  other  inex- 
tinguishable truths,  to  lie  there  in  a  long  day- 
i6o 


ARCHITECTURE    IN   AMERICA 

dream  until  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  should  rise 
again  on  the  world.  It  is  not  day  yet,  but  the 
east  is  silver,  and  Gothic  has  come  back  and  is  at 
work  again.  In  it  there  is  neither  rest  nor  finality; 
it  grows  from  day  to  day,  and  it  must  change 
insensibly  but  steadily,  accepting  new  conditions, 
adopting  new  expedients,  fitting  itself  delicately 
to  every  changing  mood  and  movement  in  the 
world.  In  time  it  will  have  become  as  different 
to  what  is  now  called  Gothic  as  that  of  the  fifteenth 
century  is  to  that  of  the  thirteenth,  but  it  must 
begin  where  it  left  off,  and  it  must  work  at  first 
from  precedent.  It  will  always  remain  Gothic, 
i.e.,  absolute  beauty,  absolute  logic,  absolute 
reason,  expressed  through  perfect  personal  liberty 
under  the  stern  control  of  inevitable  law,  rejecting 
steadily  every  hint  of  classical  forms  because  of 
what  they  connote  in  Greek,  Roman,  and  Renais- 
sance life,  namely,  heathenism. 

Those  who  accept  Gothic  on  these  grounds  have 
a  clear  field  so  far  as  the  Church  is  concerned, 
for  here  it  is  simply  sufficient  to  state  the  case  of 
i6i 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  revived  pagan  style  to  send  it  hurrying  out 
of  court.  They  propose  to  accept  the  whole  body 
of  Gothic  as  it  stood  in  the  year  1500,  and  then 
go  on  to  modify  and  develop  it  until  it  expresses 
every  changing  shade  of  the  ever-changing,  funda- 
mentally immutable  Church,  precisely  as  historic 
Gothic  voiced  Christian  civilization  in  those  ten 
greatest  of  all  centuries.  Then  they  will  try  to 
adapt  it  to  all  secular  powers  and  activities  that 
have  not  become  exponents  of  the  dominant 
modern  paganism.  They  believe  that  evil  is  never 
in  the  saddle  for  much  more  than  four  centuries 
at  a  time,  and  they  think  its  doom  is  already 
sealed;  that  now  the  tide  has  turned,  more  and 
more  of  life  will  escape  from  the  thraldom  of  the 
devil,  accepting,  as  the  badge  of  redemption. 
Christian  architecture,  now  carelessly  nominated 
"Gothic." 

Some  day   they   hope   (oh,   the   iridescence  of 

childlike  faith!)  to  get  one,  just  only  one,  of  the 

schools  of  architecture  to  range  itself  boldly  on 

the  side  of  Christian  art  and  against  pagan  art, 

162 


ARCHITECTURE   IN   AMERICA 

and  then  they  will  make  of  it  a  great  missionary 
college,  breeding  fanatical  prophets  of  Christian 
civilization  and  Christian  art.  And  therein  they 
will  teach  that  beneath  Greek  and  Roman  and 
Renaissance  and  Parisian  architecture  lies  a  body 
of  eternal  laws  that  are  sound  and  true  (taught 
better  in  Paris  now  than  in  any  other  place),  that 
exactly  these  same  laws  are  the  basis  of  Christian 
architecture,  and  must  be  learned  first  of  all;  that 
the  forms  of  pagan  architecture  possess  no  exclu- 
sive sanctity  whatever,  and  are  much  less  beautiful 
and  highly  developed  than  those  of  the  Christian 
style,  while  they  are  no  more  fit  for  Christians  to 
use  than  are  the  ritual  and  paraphernalia  of  the 
worship  of  Diana  of  Ephesus  or  Jupiter  Olympus. 
They  will  first  of  all  postulate  eternal  laws,  then 
they  will  teach  that  architecture  with  all  other 
forms  of  art  is  a  language,  and  the  most  perfect 
that  exists.  They  will  assert  that  in  spite  of  ap- 
pearances this  is  really  a  Christian  civilization 
under  which  we  live,  and  that  therefore  it  must 
voice  itself  through  a  Christian  tongue;  they  will 
163 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

point  to  Gothic  art  as  the  most  perfect  manifesta- 
tion of  pure  beauty  the  world  has  ever  known, 
and  they  will  say,  "  Learn  this,  all  of  it,  steep 
yourselves  in  the  solution  of  absolute  beauty,  let 
it  soak  in  until  you  are  full  of  its  medicinal  power, 
and  then,  sloughing  off  the  pagan  hide  that  has 
grown  over  your  bodies  during  four  centuries  of 
barbarism,  come  forth  men  and  Christians,  and 
speak  with  the  tongue  that  is  yours  by  inheritance, 
the  Truth,  the  whole  Truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
Truth,  and  so  help  you,  God." 


164 


ON    THE    BUILDING    OF 
CHURCHES 


ON  THE  BUILDING  OF  CHURCHES 

TT  is  dangerous  indeed  for  a  practising  architect 
-*■  to  talk  about  his  profession,  particularly  when 
his  audience  is  so  largely  made  up  of  his  brother 
architects,  for  the  chances  are  ten  to  one  that 
whatever  he  may  say  has  already  been  better  said, 
and  many  times.  If  this  is  not  the  case,  and  a 
man  comes  forward  with  novel  and  revolutionary 
ideas,  he  is  repaying  with  scant  courtesy  the  kind- 
ness of  those  to  whom  he  owes  his  invitation,  for 
the  odds  the  world  gives  are  heavy  against  the 
validity  of  theories  and  principles  that  come  in 
the  guise  of  novelty. 

And  yet,  there  are  whole  fields  of  architecture 

that   are    very   lightly    touched    upon    nowadays; 

here  a  man  is  not  hampered  by  the  better  teaching 

that  has  gone  before,  and  he  can  speak  freely 

167 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

without  fear  of  running  counter  to  established 
ideas.  Of  one  of  these  almost  forgotten  fields  of 
our  profession,  I  ask  your  permission  to  speak 
to-night,  —  church  building. 

That  this  province  of  art  should  be  left  free  is, 
I  think,  a  most  singular  and  a  most  ominous  fact, 
and  why  this,  almost  the  oldest  branch  of  our  art, 
the  one  from  which  we  know  most  fully  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  past,  the  one  which  has  comprehended 
the  greatest  work  of  all  ages,  as  even  now  it  offers 
almost  the  most  fertile  field  for  our  labour, — why 
this  should  be  ignored  as  it  is,  is  a  question  I  have 
been  trying  to  solve  for  a  good  many  years.  For 
churches  are  built  constantly,  great  numbers  of 
them,  and  for  the  first  ten  years,  at  least,  of  a 
young  architect's  professional  life,  they  will  oflter 
the  only  chances  that  come  to  him  whereby  he 
can  do  lasting  and  monumental  work.  Yet  what 
preparation  has  he  to  help  him  avail  himself  of 
his  opportunities?  Practically  none;  neither  in 
this  country  nor  in  France.  As  a  result  we  are 
compelled  to  lift  up  our  voices  and  wail  before 
1 68 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

the  innumerable  ridiculous  structures  that,  every 
year,  rise  like  mushrooms  out  of  our  too  fertile 
soil:  scandals  on  the  dignity  of  the  profession, 
insults  to  the  God  to  Whose  glory  they  should 
have  been  raised. 

So  far  as  our  best  public  work  is  concerned, 
we  have  little  to  learn  from  the  contemporary 
architecture  of  the  old  world.  Our  domestic  de- 
signing is,  at  its  best,  immeasvu-ably  superior  to 
similar  work  on  the  Continent,  and  almost  equal 
to  that  of  England.  Our  commercial  architecture, 
much  of  which  at  present  is  not  architecture  at 
all,  but  veneered  engineering,  is  of  course,  beyond 
criticism  in  its  way.  Our  church  building  is  utter 
nonsense  compared  with  English  work,  more  triv- 
ial and  silly  than  that  of  France,  even  if  it  lacks 
its  large  and  imposing  stupidity,  while  if  I  say 
that  it  is  quite  as  bad  as  modern  German  work, 
I  am  only  stating  in  an  exaggerated  way  a  condition 
which  really  bids  fair  to  exist. 

Now  this  is  all  wrong,  how  desperately  wrong  I 
hardly  venture  to  say;  by  failing  in  this  we  condemn 
169 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

all  we  do  in  other  fields  of  architecture,  confessing 
it  self-conscious,  occasional,  insincere.  It  is  not 
that  the  Church  is  dead  and  no  longer  clamorous 
for  fitting  habiliments  and  modes  of  expression, 
she  is  quick  with  life  and  eager  for  the  best  — 
when  something  inferior  is  not  offered  plausibly 
in  its  stead.  It  is  not,  heaven  knows,  that  there 
is  any  lack  of  precedent,  of  the  splendid  monuments 
of  the  golden  age  of  church  building.  England  is 
one  vast  graveyard  of  perished  artistic  glories. 
It  is  not  that  religious  architecture  has  worked 
itself  out  to  its  perfect  culmination,  so  passing 
away  forever,  leaving  us  hopeless  and  helpless, 
and  the  Church  shut  ofif  for  all  time  from  the 
possibility  of  further  artistic  honour.  England 
has  shown  the  falsity  of  this  last,  as  of  each  of 
the  other  assumptions. 

I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  I  believe  the  names 
of  Bodley  and  Garner,  Austin  and  Paley,  Scott 
and  Sedding,  with  many  others  as  yet  little  known, 
will  last  in  the  minds  of  men  until  they  range 
themselves  with  those  of  William  the  Englishman, 
170 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

Alan  of  Walsingham,  and  William  of  Wykeham. 
The  most  encouraging  thing  in  architecture  to-day 
is,  to  me,  not  the  civic  architecture  of  France,  not 
the  municipal  architecture  of  England,  not  the 
domestic  work,  nor  yet  the  architectural  engi- 
neering of  America,  but  church  building  in  Eng- 
land. 

For  in  all  but  the  latter  is  something  too  much 
of  ingenuity,  of  acknowledged  erudition,  of  theat- 
ricality, but  in  this,  in  English  church  architecture, 
is  something  akin  to  real  inspiration,  to  that 
vitality  for  which  we  have  sought  so  long,  and 
sought  almost  in  vain. 

You  are,  of  course,  familiar  with  the  rise  and 
progress  of  modern  religious  architecture  in  Eng- 
land, how  it  began  with  the  labour  of  the  elder 
Pugin,  the  prophet  of  the  new  life,  and  developed 
through  the  cautious  and  scholastic  work  of  such 
men  as  Pugin  the  younger,  Street,  and  Scott  into 
the  splendid  and  vital  art  of  Bodley  and  Sedding. 
The  early  work  was,  as  I  say,  cautious,  initiative, 
archaeological;  but,  little  by  little,  as  men  began 
171 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

to  know  their  materials,  and  to  become  familiar 
with  conditions  and  requirements,  greater  mobil- 
ity showed  itself,  greater  courage,  more  vital  feel- 
ing, until  at  last  John  Sedding  rose  at  a  bound 
from  the  old  hampering  traditions  and  precedents, 
and  struck  out,  in  brilliant  flashes,  conceptions  of 
religious  architecture  that  hitherto  had  been  in- 
conceivable. It  was  not  that  he  cast  all  precedent 
.and  history  to  the  winds,  striving  to  create  a  new 
style,  but  it  was  that  he  realized  how  the  glory  and 
nobility  of  English  mediaeval  architecture  lay,  not 
in  the  contour  of  mouldings  and  the  outline  of 
tracery,  but  in  a  certain  confidence  in  the  Church 
at  whose  word  the  work  was  done;  in  a  serene  faith 
in  her  claims  and  mission,  in  a  love  for  her  worship 
and  ritual,  in  a  sudden  realization  that  she  was 
Catholic  and  not  Protestant. 

I  am  afraid  you  will  think  I  am  mixing  theology 
with  architecture,  but  the  mixing  was  done  long 
ago,  and  very  thoroughly.  Until  the  time  of  the 
movement  known  as  the  Reformation,  art  and 
religion  were  inseparable;  after  that  date  there 
172 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

was  not  much  art,  or  religion  either,  for  that 
matter,  although  a  good  many  people  seemed  to 
think  so,  and  were  willing  to  fight  for  their  theory. 
However,  all  I  mean  to  call  your  attention 
to  is  the  instructive  fact  that  there  was  no 
real  church  architecture  in  England  after  the 
Reformation  until  the  time  of  the  Oxford  move- 
ment, the  object  of  which  was  to  wean  the  Anglican 
Church  away  from  Protestantism,  and  draw  her 
back  to  the  Catholic  faith.  This  wonderful  new 
hfe  in  religion  was  echoed  in  art,  and  as  a  result 
a  vitality  manifested  itself  in  church  architecture 
which  had  been  wanting  for  centuries. 

At  last  there  was  something  to  work  for.  Hither- 
to, if  churches  were  built  at  all  in  England,  which 
was  unusual,  they  had  been,  almost  all  of  them, 
for  the  non-conformists,  and  here  the  require- 
ments were  necessarily  different  to  those  which 
had  held  in  the  old  days,  and  were  not  such  as  to 
fire  an  architect  with  very  great  ardour.  They 
were  really  lecture  halls,  and  artistically  the  de- 
mands they  made  on  an  architect  were  not  at  all 
173 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

different  to  those  made  by  secular  work.  The 
CathoHc  restoration  of  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  brought  a  wholly  new  influence  into  play. 
New  churches  were  really  needed  now,  and  by 
the  established  Church,  and  the  demand  was  no 
longer  for  lecture  halls,  but  for  temples  of  public 
worship.  Then  it  was  that  men  began  to  try  to 
do  work  like  that  of  the  old  church  builders,  first 
by  copying  forms,  details,  mouldings,  then  later 
by  striking  deeper  still,  by  studying  the  old  work 
and  finding  therein  the  secret  of  its  success,  the 
spirit  that  rested  above  moulding  and  tracery,  the 
soul  of  the  work,  if  I  may  use  a  grievously  mis- 
handled phrase. 

Well,  they  found  this  —  some  of  the  architects 
—  and  they  went  to  work  to  build  churches  which 
should  not  pretend  to  be  twelfth  century  when 
really  they  were  nineteenth,  but  should  be  modern, 
sensitive,  vital,  and  in  a  measure  they  succeeded. 
They  did  not  play  with  Romanesque  or  French 
Renaissance,  thank  God,  though  they  did  at  first 
wander  off  after  dead  periods  of  Gothic,  in  the 
174 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

mistaken  idea  that  these  were  pure  and  perfect, 
but  ultimately  they  did  the  only  wise  thing  for 
Englishmen  to  do,  they  acknowledged  that  Early 
Pointed  and  Geometrical  and  Decorated  Gothic 
were  completed  styles,  and  not  for  their  century, 
however  beautiful  they  might  be,  since  they  rep- 
resented social,  religious,  mental  conditions  that 
no  longer  existed;  but  they  discovered  and  accepted 
another  style  of  which  this  could  not  be  said. 
For  the  history  of  architecture  in  England  did  not 
end  with  the  House  of  Plantagenet,  —  it  continued 
under  the  Tudors,  and  was  slowly  developing  into 
a  beautiful  thing  indeed  when  Henry  VIII  stamped 
it  out  with  his  heel  and  brought  art  and  religion 
to  their  death  with  one  and  the  same  blow. 

Examples  of  this  work  are  not  common,  for  the 
years  were  very  few  which  saw  its  brilliant  be- 
ginnings. In  almost  all  of  the  architectural  work 
of  the  first  years  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  it 
shows  itself,  however,  and  particularly  in  the 
chapel  of  Henry  VII  at  Westminster,  the  great 
chapels  at  Windsor  and  Kings  College,  Cambridge, 
175 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

in  Sherborne  Abbey,  in  countless  parish  churches, 
in  various  windows,  shrines,  and  chantries, 
and  in  the  domestic  architecture  of  the  "Tudor" 
period.  In  all  these  we  find  the  root  Gothic 
rising  into  a  tree  of  wonderful  beauty,  blossoming 
with  quite  new  flowers,  covering  its  strong  and 
powerful  limbs  with  efflorescence  of  the  South, 
with  the  blossoms  of  that  "Early  Renaissance" 
which  was  so  matchlessly  beautiful  in  Italy,  and 
which  was  absolutely  a  logical  development  from 
Mediaevalism,  and  incomparably  better  than  its 
bastard  offspring,  the  "High  Renaissance,"  which 
succeeded  to  the  honours  of  its  dead  progenitor. 

Here  was  a  new  spirit  in  architecture,  an  alliance 
of  MedicBvalism  with  the  "sweetness  and  light"  of 
the  real,  the  honourable  "Renaissance  of  learn- 
ing," a  spirit  that  promised  to  revitalize  the  old 
Gothic  which  had  almost  died  away  in  the  for- 
malities of  rigid  "Tudor."  What  might  have 
come  had  this  movement  been  allowed  to  work 
itself  out,  had  Henry  VIII  not  crushed  it  into 
extinction,  we  can  only  wonder,  and  try  to  ascertain. 
176 


BUILDING    OF   CHURCHES 

I  say  "try"  to  ascertain,  for  it  seems  to  me  that 
so  far  as  church  building  is  concerned,  we  have 
here  a  style  ready  to  hand,  which  is  not  complete, 
and  which  has  a  singular  appropriateness  for  our 
requirements.  It  is  this  style  which  the  best 
ecclesiastical  architects  in  England  have  adopted 
as  the  medium  of  their  expression,  and  they  have 
set  themselves  to  the  gracious  labour  of  trying  to 
develop  it  on  the  lines  indicated  by  its  fragmentary 
remains. 

And  there  is  wonderful  fitness  in  this,  for  the 
following  reasons.  But  before  speaking  of  them 
I  want  to  explain  two  points  that  may  not  be 
quite  clear. 

First,  —  in  talking  about  church  building,  we 
must  remember  that  it  is  of  two  kinds,  Catholic 
and  Protestant.  The  requirements  of  plan  and 
purpose  are  utterly  different  in  the  two  cases,  the 
theory  underlying  each  is  equally  antagonistic  to 
the  other,  and  what  might  be  postulated  of 
Protestant  church  building  would  be  quite  false 
of  Catholic  work. 

177 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Second,  —  that  it  is  foolishness  to  talk  about  a 
national  style  and  to  assert  that  we  should  work 
in  the  same  artistic  fashion  for  every  building 
demanded  on  this  continent.  Art  is  a  result,  not 
an  attribute  nor  an  accessory,  and  it  is  the  result 
of  conditions  that  no  longer  exist  anywhere  in  the 
world,  unless,  perhaps,  in  rapidly  vanishing  form, 
in  that  most  perfect  contemporary  civilization 
which  we  know,  —  the  civilization  of  Japan. 

If  this  theory  is  as  accurate  as  I  claim  it  to  be 
logical,  our  art  schools  must  only  serve  as  kinder- 
gartens; from  them  we  can  not  expect  to 
obtain  really  great  artists  or  immortal  art,  and 
therefore  such  art  as  we  do  receive  must  be  spo- 
radic, individual;  neither  ethnic  nor  popular  in 
any  respect.  The  great  mass  of  art  will  continue 
to  be,  as  it  is  now,  self-conscious,  the  work  of  the 
most  inartistic  creature  the  world  ever  saw,  the 
professional  artist.  Hence,  the  pleasing  talk  about 
a  national  style  of  architecture  is  futile.  We  must 
be  content  to  remain  self-conscious,  and  if  we  are 
to  do  comparatively  good  work,  do  the  best  we 
178 


BUILDING    OF   CHURCHES 

can  to  adapt  the  various  styles  of  the  artistically 
happier  days  of  the  past  to  the  varying  nature 
and  requirements  of  modern  conditions.  The  med-  , 
iaeval  spirit  and  Gothic  details  would  be  ludicrous 
if  applied  to  a  twenty-story  office  building.  By- 
zantine ornament  is  absurd  in  a  Protestant  meet- 
ing-house. French  Renaissance  is  sacrilegious  in 
an  Anglican  parish-church  or  cathedral.  Ro- 
manesque forms  have  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  American  government,  and  are  therefore 
foolish  when  used  in  a  city  hall  or  court  house. 
We  no  longer  have  a  civilization  possessing  any 
single  element  of  unity,  and  therefore  our  archi- 
tecture should  be  just  as  individual,  just  as  varied 
as  our  civilization,  for  art  that  is  not  representative, 
expressive,  is  not  art,  but  artifice. 

So  returning,  after  this  long  parenthesis,  to  the 
matter  of  the  peculiar  applicability  of  "  Developed 
Gothic"  to  modern  church  building,  I  think  you 
will  admit  that  there  is  great  kinship  between  the 
style  Henry  destroyed,  and  the  Church  which  now 
demands  our  services  as  architects.  I  am  speak- 
179 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

ing  wholly  of  Catholic  church  work,  Roman, 
Anglican,  American;  Protestant  or  non-conformist 
work  is  of  an  absolutely  different  nature,  and  here 
for  once  I  refuse  to  speaTc  dogmatically,  but  I  am 
inclined  to  hold  that  a  Congregational  church  ought 
to  be  expressed  in  that  Georgian  style  which  is 
its  particular  property,  and  which  has  such  great 
chances  of  development,  while  I  cannot  help  feel- 
ing that  it  is,  in  a  way,  inconsistent  for  the  Metho- 
dists and  Baptists  and  Presbyterians  to  condemn 
Catholic  theology  and  the  Mediaeval  Church,  and 
then  quietly  assume  the  architectural  forms  that 
express  in  every  line  and  shadow  the  very  things 
they  detest;  but  this  may  be  a  matter  of  taste. 
All  the  same  it  seems  to  me  that  no  conscientious 
architect  has  any  moral  or  artistic  right  to  try  to 
build  a  meeting-house  on  church  lines,  for  in  so 
doing  he  is  false  to  the  honesty  of  his  art,  and 
untrue  to  his  obligations  to  his  chents.  A  meeting- 
house is  a  clear  and  honourable  subject  for  archi- 
tectural study,  but  it  is  not  a  church,  as  churches 
were  held  to  be  when  they  were  built,  and  therefore 
1 80 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

it  should  be  treated  honestly  and  respectfully  on 
its  own  lines.  If  a  semicircular  arrangement  of 
opera-chairs  is  desired  in  place  of  pews,  put  them 
in,  and  big,  bright  windows  likewise,  galleries, 
sloping  floors,  all  the  conveniences  required  by 
the  peculiar  conditions.  Do  not  insist  on  big, 
inside  columns,  shadowy  aisles,  and  all  the  emo- 
tional adjuncts  of  Catholic  worship.  They  are  as 
out  of  place  here  as  square  auditoriums  and 
curving  rows  of  seats  are  intolerable  in  an  Anglican 
church.  There  are  churches  and  meeting-houses. 
For  heaven's  sake  don't  let  us  confound  terms, 
but  let  us  recognize  the  fact  that  there  is  Catholic 
and  Protestant  architecture  as  well  as  Catholic 
and  Protestant  theology. 

Confining  ourselves  now  to  Catholic  architecture 
proper,  we  certainly  find  that,  however  inappro- 
priate the  principles  of  medieval  art  might  be 
when  applied  to  Protestant  requirements,  the  same 
does  not  hold  true  in  the  case  of  Anglican  or 
Roman  Catholic  work,  for  the  most  vital  tendency 
in  the  two  branches  of  the  Anglican  Church  to-day 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

is  towards  a  restoration  of  much  that  was  un- 
wisely cast  aside  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation, 
while  the  Roman  CathoHc  Church,  in  the  United 
States  is,  or  should  be,  a  continuation  of  her 
mediaeval  tradition  not  a  development  of  Ren- 
aissance error. 

For  this  large  section  of  Christianity,  then,  there 
can  be  no  more  logical  and  fitting  style  than  that 
which  has  suffered  such  untimely  eclipse.  It  is  in- 
stinct with  the  very  life  of  our  ancestors,  it  holds 
within  itself  those  powers  and  potencies  of  won- 
derful development  that  three  hundred  years  ago 
were  shut  out  of  life  though  fortunately  preserved 
until  happier  days.  Perhaps  these  days  have  come 
again.  Certainly  the  awakening  of  Anglicanism 
to  a  knowledge  of  its  Catholic  heritage  gives  good 
promise  of  this,  though  elsewhere  the  hope  is  not 
so  clearly  marked.  We  are  returning  to  the  part- 
ing of  the  ways,  that  we  may  choose  the  right 
path,  abandoned  for  so  long.  Well,  if  this  is  done 
in  theology  and  ritual,  why  not  also  in  their 
material  expression,  —  architecture  ? 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

"But  this  is  retrogression,"  you  will  say,  "the 
restoration  of  mediaeval  forms  is  an  anachronism." 
Granted,  but  the  Church  is  an  anachronism;  let 
us  admit  that  at  the  start.  She  is  not  yet  in  har- 
mony with  many  modern  conditions,  thank  God, 
and  let  us  pray  that  this  may  continue  true.  It  is 
almost  her  greatest  glory.  Art  also  is  an  anachro- 
nism in  our  modern  life,  so  unbeautiful  is  it  in 
almost  every  way,  not  only  outwardly,  but  in  its 
methods  of  thought,  its  forms  of  activity,  its  am- 
bitions, its  principles.  The  architect  who  has  to 
design  commercial  structures,  public  buildings, 
dwelling?,  railroad  stations,  school-houses,  is  fight- 
ing against  Fate.  He  can't  let  himself  go  in  any 
of  these  directions,  but  the  case  is  different  in  the 
matter  of  churches.  Here  he  is  working  for  a 
great  institution  that  is  a  glorious  survival  from 
times  when  all  life  and  thought  were  more  beauti- 
ful than  now,  and  when  he  enters  her  service  he 
is  hampered  by  no  restrictions,  —  except  building 
committees.  So  do  not  let  us,  as  architects,  say 
a  word  against  the  anachronisms  of  the  Church. 
183 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

They  should  be  the  cause  of  our  utmost  thanks- 
giving, since  they  give  us  opportunities  such  as  are 
offered  by  no  other  power  in  the  world. 

I  am  still  speaking,  of  course,  only  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  and  Anglican  Churches  for  they  can 
claim  more  fully  the  honour  of  being  abso- 
lutely out  of  touch  with  what  we  are  pleased  to 
call  "Modern  Civilization."  If  we  are  called 
upon  to  build  a  meeting-house  for  one  of  the  Prot- 
testant  denominations,  we  must,  of  course,  build 
a  lecture-hall  where  the  laws  of  sight  and  sound 
are  supreme,  and  we  must  not  forget  that  the 
kitchen  and  dining-hall,  the  gymnasium,  bowling- 
alley,  and  boys'  club  are  as  important  as  anything 
else,  and  that  the  elements  of  mystery  and  awe 
and  solemn  splendour  are  out  of  place.  This  is 
not  a  criticism;  —  it  is  a  statement  of  a  condition, 
and  of  the  architect's  limitations:  —  here  he  must 
work  in  one  way.  But  when  he  approaches  a 
problem  set  by  some  branch  of  the  Church  which 
accepts  Catholic  theology,  and  uses  a  liturgical  form 
of  worship,  he  must  work  in  another,  and  in  this 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

last  case  he  obtains  an  opportunity  such  as  is 
offered  nowhere  else  in  the  world,  an  opportunity  to 
treat  architecture  as  an  absolute  art;  to  use  all  the 
powers  thereof  in  the  fullest  way;  to  call  in  the  aid 
of  every  other  form  of  the  allied  arts,  glass  staining 
and  sculpture,  mosaic  and  wall-painting,  em- 
broidery and  wood-carving  and  inlaying,  metal 
work,  tapestry  weaving,  and  music.  It  is  strange 
indeed  that  architects  fail  to  realize  as  con- 
stantly as  do  rectors  and  building  committees  the 
almost  unlimited  opportunities  for  creating  the 
most  marvellous  fabrics  of  art,  that  are  offered 
by  church  building. 

Of  course,  there  are  limitations,  grievous  ones, 
and  I  speak  from  the  heart.  There  are  gentlemen, 
who  have  visited  the  English  cathedral  towns, 
and  read  Parker's  Glossary,  and  think  they  know 
a  great  deal  about  architecture.  There  are  parish 
meetings  and  vestries,  and  senior  and  junior 
wardens,  and  a  great  many  other  very  terrible 
things  besides.  It  is  not  a  case  of  one  Scylla,  and 
one  Charybidis,  nor  one  frying-pan  and  one  fire,  — 
185 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

it  is  a  medley  of  all  of  them,  with  the  devil  and 
the  deep  sea  thrown  in.  Not  that  they  do  not 
mean  well,  —  the  rectors,  vestries,  etc.,  not  their 
poetic  similes,  —  they  do,  but  sometimes  I  am 
tempted  to  think  that  the  only  person  one  can 
under  no  circumstances  forgive  is  the  person  who 
"means  well."  A  brazen  criminal  is  sometimes 
easier  to  get  along  with. 

Well,  these  are  all  powers  that  prevent  an 
architect  from  doing  what  is  really  his  best  work; 
but  here  comes  in  the  exercise  of  his  proudest 
power,  —  diplomacy.  A  man  can  pay  others 
to  do  his  office  work  for  him,  to  construct  his 
trusses,  calculate  his  strains,  keep  his  books  — 
if  he  is  so  fabulously  wealthy  as  to  possess  books; 
he  can  even,  by  suppressing  his  conscience,  hire 
men  to  do  his  designing  for  him,  but  he  can  never 
employ  a  diplomatic  representative.  Here  he  is 
thrown  on  Providence  and  his  own  resources;  his 
technical  education  gives  him  no  aid,  nor  will 
until  our  architectural  schools  establish  chairs  of 
diplomacy.  Incessant  practice  develops  this 
i86 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

quality  rapidly,  however,  and  I  sometimes  think 
that  if  the  President  would  appoint  his  ambas- 
sadors and  ministers  from  the  ranks  of  the  archi- 
tectural profession,  the  United  States  would  be 
better  represented  abroad  than  any  other  civilized 
power  under  the  sun. 

I  speak  of  this  quality  of  diplomacy  here  because 
I  really  think  it  most  important  in  this  connection. 
Building  committees  of  city  halls  and  public 
libraries,  and  even  prospective  householders,  are 
very  modest  in  the  matter  of  architectural  prefer- 
ences, but  church  architecture  seems  to  be  a 
subject  on  which  every  layman  thinks  himself 
justified  in  pronouncing  an  opinion.  Happily, 
there  are  generally  as  many  as  there  are  members 
■  of  the  building  committee,  so  now  and  then  the 
architect  is  left  at  peace  while  the  wardens  and  the 
vestry  fight  it  out  together. 

So,  as  I  say,  when  you  have  churches  to  build, 

assume  at  the  start  that  every  individual  with 

whom  you  come  in  contact  will  believe  that  he 

knows  at  least  as  much  as  you  do  about  the  artistic 

187 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

side  of  your  profession.  Let  him  think  it  still, 
and  trust  to  your  diplomacy,  not  your  drawings, 
to  gain  your  end. 

But  the  argument  is  not  all  on  this  side.  Judg- 
ing from  the  strange  and  surprising  buildings  that 
excite  our  amazement  every  day  through  illustra- 
tions published  in  architectural  magazines,  the 
majority  of  men  who  try  to  design  churches  are 
probably  saved  from  a  thing  almost  inconceivable, 
—  worse  work,  —  by  these  very  authorities  whom 
I  have  spoken  of  as  sometimes  whitening  the  hair 
of  the  architects  who  fondly  think  they  know 
something  about  ecclesiastical  architecture.  Since 
Trinity  Church  in  New  York  was  built,  it  is  pretty 
safe  to  say  that  until  about  ten  years  ago  the  re- 
spectable examples  of  this  class  of  architecture 
that  have  come  into  existence  could  be  numbered 
on  one's  fingers.  Church  building  was  simply 
the  record  of  a  steady  degeneration,  hardly  appre- 
ciated, I  think,  until  the  great  competition  for  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine  in  New  York, 
some  fifteen  years  ago,  showed  to  what  a  depth 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

we  had  fallen.  If  I  remember  aright,  there  were 
sixty-seven  designs  sent  in.  Twenty  or  thirty 
were  published,  and  hardly  one  of  these  showed 
the  most  rudimentary  idea  of  cathedral  require- 
ments or  the  slightest  suspicion  of  religious  feeling, 
historical  study,  or  artistic  spirit.  To  that  com- 
petition I  sent  a  design,  and  one  of  the  men  with 
whom  I  am  now  associated  another.  Heaven 
knows  which  was  the  worse,  still  I  really  think  the 
others  were  Uttle  better.  The  result  of  the  com- 
petition must  have  been  a  shock,  for  it  showed  at 
once  that  so  far  as  church  architecture  was  con- 
cerned, the  profession  in  America  was  nowhere. 
Since  then  there  has  been  an  improvement,  in  that 
a  few  men  have  begun  to  do  good  work,  but  in 
the  meantime  the  general  run  of  design  has  de- 
teriorated until  I  doubt  if  anywhere  on  earth  more 
ridiculous  buildings  are  designed  than  here  in 
America,  excepting  Germany  always,  of  course, 
where  the  state  of  things  is  an  awful  warning  to 
us  of  what  will  happen  if  we  fail  to  mend  our 
ways. 

189 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Now  where  does  the  trouble  lie?  Well,  it 
seems  to  me  it  lies  just  here. 

First.  We  have  nearly  all  fallen  out  of  touch 
with  the  Church,  so  that  we  no  longer  accept  her 
authority,  obey  her  discipline,  or  love  her  worship. 

Second.  (^We  have  applied  ourselves  so  studiously 
to  piu"ely  commercial  designing  that  we  have  lost 
our  feeling  for  the  spiritual  and  religious  side  of 
architecture.     ) 

Third.  (We  have  utterly  missed  the  old  secret 
of  church  building,  which  once  made  it  possible 
for  men  to  do  simple,  noble,  powerful  work.) 

Fourth.  VThe  Church  authorities  have  so  con- 
fused the  whole  reason  for  building  churches,  have 
come  to  demand  such  impossible  and  grotesque 
features,  and  insist  upon  such  destructive  quah- 
ties,  that  the  inspiration  for  an  architect  is  nearly 
gone. 

This  is  hardly  the  place  to  speak  of  the  first  two 

of  these  reasons,  except  perhaps  to  say  that  I 

firmly  believe  no  man  can  build  a  good  Roman 

Catholic  or  Anglican  church  who  is  not  himself  in 

190 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

loving  sympathy  with  their  motive  and  object, 
and  that  we  can't  do  good  religious  art  of  any  kind 
until  we  ourselves  accept  religion  as  the  dominant 
power  in  the  world.  Of  the  other  reasons  I  do 
want  to  say  a  word  or  two. 

Look  at  the  average  church  of  the  period. 
What  is  its  most  grievous  fault  ?  Picturesqueness. 
Narrowed  down  to  the  last  point,  there  is  the 
greatest  trouble.  Sprawling,  irregular  plans, 
chaotic  roofs,  silly  turrets  and  meaningless  towers, 
windows  of  a  dozen  shapes,  united  in  only  one 
thing,  —  their  incorrigible  badness.  No  repose, 
no  simplicity,  no  self-respect;  just  a  delirious  at- 
tempt at  hectic  picturesqueness  through  the  use  of 
crazy  elaboration.  A  sin  we  all  commit  is  not 
knowing  enough  to  stop  when  we  get  through,  and 
bad  as  this  is  in  secular  work,  it  is  doubly  evil 
where  churches  are  concerned.  To  a  great  ex- 
tent sectarianism  is  to  blame,  for  the  rivalry  of 
denominationalism  drives  the  authorities  to  turn 
their  church  buildings  into  architectural  posters, 
to  lure  the  wandering  and  unwary  stranger  within 
191 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

their  walls.  "Give  us  something  that  will  be 
unique  and  unlike  anything  in  the  neighbour- 
hood." These  are  actual  instructions  that  were 
given  to  us  not  long  ago  by  a  religious  society  in 
a  Massachusetts  town.  And  so  an  architect  must 
not  be  held  wholly  responsible  for  the  horrors  that 
bear  his  name,  but  generally  he  can  mitigate  the 
excessive  demands  for  originality  and  "pictur- 
esqueness"  that  are  made  on  him,  if  he  will.  And 
this  is  a  pious  duty.  Only  too  often,  however,  he 
himself  is  the  sinner,  and  the  clients  are  the  vic- 
tims Almost  weekly  you  will  see  in  the  pages  of 
the  architectural  magazines  and  the  Church  pe- 
riodicals, fantastic  nightmares  that  cannot  possibly 
be  satisfactory  even  to  those  for  whom  they  are 
built.  The  modes  of  committing  crime  are  endless; 
the  motive  is  unchanging,  and  this  motive  is  pictur- 
esqueness.  False  picturesqueness,  I  mean,  for 
there  is  that  which  is  good,  but  for  the  chromo 
Christmas-card  picturesqueness,  which  is  the 
result  of  endless  elaboration,  there  is  no  justifica- 
tion now,  nor  pardon  hereafter.  Through  their 
192 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

overloaded,  chaotic  design  shines  just  one 
dominant  quality:  irretrievable  vulgarity.  And 
this  is  what  the  man  achieves  who  tries 
to  be  picturesque  in  his  church  building:  vul- 
garity. It  does  not  matter  whether  the  work 
is  that  of  a  snide  fellow  in  a  western  town, 
who  prints  books  of  "tasty  designs,"  or  of  an 
officer  of  an  august  architectural  society.  In 
the  one  case  the  vulgarity  is  ignorant,  in  the 
other  it  is  learned,  and  the  latter  is  the  harder 
to  forgive. 

The  development  of  this  particularly  gross  and 
offensive  work  is  a  matter  of  comparatively  recent 
years,  and  for  a  good  deal  of  it  I  fear  one  of  the 
greatest  geniuses  of  the  last  century,  or  of  any 
other,  is  responsible.  I  refer  to  H.  H.  Richardson. 
Before  his  day,  church  work  was  dull  and  stolid; 
bad  enough  in  a  clumsy  way,  but  almost  good 
compared  with  what  followed.  For  Richardson's 
genius  I  have  unbounded  admiration;  for  the  style 
he  brought  into  vogue  I  have  little  liking;  while 
for  the  nameless  horror  that  it  has  engendered,  I 
193 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

have  only  feelings  of  mortal  dismay.  In  Trinity 
Church,  Boston,  there  is  much  to  admire,  much 
of  which  we  can  stand  in  awe;  but,  beautiful  as  it 
is,  it  would  have  been  better  for  the  architecture 
of  this  country  if  it  had  never  come  into  existence. 
From  it  have  sprung  nine  tenths  of  the  monstros- 
ities that  desolate  the  landscape,  and  add  a  new 
horror  to  our  towns  and  cities.  Only  a  giant  can 
handle  Romanesque,  —  and  Richardson  was  a 
giant.  His  imitators  were  dwarfs,  and  in  their 
hands  the  materials  the  master  wielded  with  vast 
and  wonderful  power  became  the  very  millstones 
that  drag  them  down  into  the  sea  of  contempt. 
If  Richardson  had  foreseen  what  he  was  making 
possible  when  he  laid  up  walls  of  random,  rock- 
faced,  granite  ashlar,  and  trimmed  them  with 
Longmeadow  stone;  when  he  swung  gigantic 
voussoirs  about  narrow,  round-topped  windows; 
when  he  chopped  barbaric  ornament  out  of  red 
sandstone,  and  laid  his  coloured  granite  up  in 
rough,  uncouth  patterns;  if  he  could  have  foreseen 
what  crimes  would  be  committed  by  these  means 
194 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

and  in  his  name,  his  hand  must  have  faltered  and 
fallen  to  his  side. 

It  will  be  years  before  we  get  rid  of  rock-faced 
ashlar  and  Romanesque  grotesques,  of  deep  vous- 
soirs  and  octagonal  towers,  of  round  windows  and 
gigantic  arched  doorways,  and  so  long  as  they 
remain  we  may  look  in  vain  for  any  improvement. 
The  trail  of  the  serpent  will  be  over  all  things, 
and  nothing  short  of  the  most  rigid  training  can 
work  the  poison  out  of  our  system. 

Just  such  training  as  one  receives  in  our  archi- 
tectural schools  is  the  best  antidote:  hard  labour 
at  solid  classical  design.  Nothing  is  better  calcu- 
lated to  curb  one's  unnecessary  vitality,  to  estab- 
lish a  respect  for  law,  for  dignity,  for  sense  of 
proportion  and  for  reserve.  I  can't  for  a  moment 
admit  that  this  exclusive  classical  training  is  the 
end  of  all  things,  as  it  certainly  is  the  beginning. 
But  the  laws  of  self-respect  and  dignity  are  taught 
better  by  classical  work  than  any  other  thing,  and 
so  long  as  we  do  not  stop  there  and  try  to  translate 
the  Catholic  Faith  into  the  argot  of  the  Ecole  des 
195 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Beaux  Arts,  but  go  on  and  learn  the  wonderful 
language  of  mediaeval  styles,  that  we  may  become 
honourable  servants  of  organized  religion,  we  are 
on  the  right  way. 

This  then  is  the  only  thing  that  can  save  us  from 
the  vulgarity  that  is  dominant  in  our  church 
buildings:  classical  training  first,  and  then,  after 
the  ground  is  cleared,  loving  study  of  true,  Chris- 
tian work.  A  few  weeks  in  some  of  the  southern 
English  counties  can  only  fill  a  thinking  man  with 
horror  of  what  we  are  doing  now,  a  horror  that 
goes  beyond  expression.  To  the  student  returning 
from  England,  the  shoddy  little  shanties  that 
scream  at  one  to  come  and  look  at  them,  the  gaudy 
and  bedizened  horrors  that  flaunt  themselves  on 
the  corners  of  city  streets,  can  only  seem  the  apoth- 
eosis of  vulgarity,  fraught  with  vital  danger  to 
society  and  to  morality.  I  don't  think  this  is  too 
strong  language:  the  documents  in  the  case  justify 
even  worse  invective.  Over  an  ambitious  office 
building,  a  Romanesque  town  hall,  a  Colonial 
cottage,  it  doesn't  pay  to  get  angry;  but  when 
196 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

religion  is  insulted,  as  it  is  nowadays  by  the  tawdry 
phantasms  of  a  diseased  imagination,  a  little  in- 
dignation is,  I  think,  allowable.  For  bad  archi- 
tecture is  immoral,  and  its  immorality  is  not  based 
on  its  violation  of  custom  or  civil  law,  but  on  its 
defiance  of  the  Divine  Law  that  is  at  the  base  of 
all  art  and  religion.  Now,  religion  cannot  ex- 
press itself  fully,  except  through  the  symbolism  of 
art.  What  then  can  it  do  when  its  own  mouthpiece 
turns  the  words  of  reverence  into  blasphemy  ? 

Here  is  a  great  work  for  us  to  do;  make  our  art 
once  more  the  handmaid  of  religion.  By  so  doing 
we  honour  architecture,  help  the  glorious  work  of 
the  Church,  advance  civilization. 

How  shall  we  do  this  ?  First  of  all,  let  us  realize 
that  art,  and  pre-eminently  our  own  art  of  archi- 
tecture, is  one  of  the  greatest  powers  in  the  whole 
world;  not  a  means  of  making  a  living,  but  a  tre- 
mendous agency  for  expressing  the  loftiest  emo- 
tions of  humanity,  for  arousing  the  dormant  souls 
of  men,  exciting  their  imagination  to  action,  urg- 
ing them  to  creative  work,  turning  them  from 
197 


THE    GOTHIC   QUEST 

single  devotion  to  materialism  to  spiritual 
activity. 

We  do  not  yet  know  half  the  awful  power  we 
have  in  our  hands.  We  feel  it  dimly,  now  and 
then,  in  the  golden  caverns  of  St.  Mark's  in  Venice, 
in  the  rocky  fastnesses  of  the  French  cathedrals, 
in  the  shadowy,  magical  lands  that  lie  within  the 
walls  of  Durham  and  York,  Exeter  and  Canter- 
bury. And  from  these  flashes  of  dimly  realized 
power,  power  that  is  divine  in  its  source  and  in  its 
influence,  we  come  home  and  build  —  what  ? 
Look  around  and  answer. 

I  remember  once  when  a  particularly  impudent 
and  insignificant  little  piece  of  vulgarity  was  built 
in  Boston  for  an  Unitarian  society,  the  proud  archi- 
tect had  himself  interviewed,  and  published  in  a 
daily  paper  a  statement  that  this  particular  horror 
was  modelled  on  the  lines  of  St.  Mark's  in  Venice. 
This  was  many  years  ago,  and  I  was  just  home 
from  my  first  visit  to  that  city  of  enchantment. 
I  was  convinced  in  my  own  mind  that  murder  in 
this  case  was  not  an  indictable  offence,  and  I 
iq8 


BUILDING   OF   CHURCHES 

have  never  ceased  to  regret  that  I  did  not  follow 
my  righteous  impulses. 

Now,  surely,  it  is  not  so  hard  a  thing  to  build  a 
good  church,  I  do  not  say  a  great  church,  for 
frankly  I  doubt  if  we  can  do  that  now  with  things 
as  they  are.  But  at  least  we  can  work  soberly 
and  respectfully. 

A  good  church  ought  to  be  the  simplest  thing  in 
the  world,  without  straining  for  effect,  without 
affectation  or  elaboration.  The  old  men  knew 
how  to  get  results.  They  knew  that  a  square 
plan  was  just  the  very  worst  for  acoustics  con- 
ceivable: so  they  made  their  naves  long,  narrow, 
and  high,  and  in  them  you  can  hear  perfectly,  as 
you  can  in  any  modern  church  built  on  the  same 
lines.  They  knew  that  a  church  was  not  pri- 
marily a  lecture  room,  but  a  Tabernacle  of  God, 
a  place  for  public  worship.  What  did  they  do, 
these  builders,  in  the  creation  of  the  wonderful 
churches  that  are  still  the  objects  of  our  hopeless 
envy  and  admiration  ?  Just  this,  —  they  mar- 
shalled all  the  powers  of  art,  first,  for  what  they 
199 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

considered  to  be  the  glory  of  God;  and  second, 
as  a  great,  silent,  irresistible  influence  to  work  on 
the  minds  of  all  who  should  come  within  their 
sphere,  lifting  them  out  of  the  hard  world  with  all 
its  narrowing,  soiling  agencies,  up  to  the  splen- 
dour of  the  infinite  God  for  Whose  worship  the 
temple  was  raised. 

They  knew  better  than  we,  these  monkish 
craftsmen,  how  closely  allied  are  art  and  religion; 
knew  that  both  burst  into  life  from  the  same  im- 
pulse as  this  worked  itself  out  in  the  world.  They 
knew  that  in  a  way  religion  cannot  adequately  ex- 
press itself  except  through  the  agency  of  art,  and 
that  when  all  the  arts  were  united,  as  happened 
in  the  cathedrals  and  abbeys  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  Church  found  its  greatest  champion,  its  most 
eloquent  mouthpiece. 

Unless  we  can  build  in  this  way,  we  shall  never 
do  work  that  will  last  as  theirs  has  endured. 
Can  we  do  this?  Can  we,  as  architects,  answer 
enthusiastically  to  the  call  of  men  who  desire  a 
Christian  church,  bringing  to  their  assistance,  not 
200 


BUILDING    OF   CHURCHES 

the  considerations  of  a  tradesman,  but  the  fire  of 
an  artist?  Can  we  realize  that  before  this  prob- 
lem of  all  others  we  are  not  acting  simply  as  a 
client's  professional  adviser  at  five  per  cent  com- 
missions, but  through  him  are  serving  God,  and 
to  God  are  responsible  for  all  that  we  do?  Can 
we  come  to  look  upon  architecture  as  a  part  of 
the  vast  language  of  art,  the  exalted  privilege  of 
which  is  the  expression  of  the  emotions,  of  the 
loftiest  achievements  of  the  soul  of  man,  as  they 
can  be  expressed  by  no  other  human  power? 

I  believe  we  can.  At  all  events  we  must  if  we 
care  for  our  art  at  all  except  as  a  means  of  making, 
or  trying  to  make,  a  living.  We  shall  have  much 
to  fight  against.  We  shall  find  opposing  us  a  great 
civilization  that  hates  religion,  or  scorns  it;  a 
civilization  made  up  very  largely  of  an  un-Chris- 
tian  economic  system,  a  sordid  and  unhonoured 
society,  venal  and  corrupt  politics,  rampant  com- 
mercialism, narrow  ideals.  Against  this  strange 
mass  of  seething  effort  and  mistaken  action,  — 
which,  by  its  very  nature,  is  unfruitful  of  the  least 

20I 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

vestige  of  art,  and  inevitably  destructive  of  it,  — 
we  must  contend,  as  our  predecessors  never  were 
called  upon  to  do.  There  were  evils  enough  in 
the  past,  God  knows,  but  they  were  not  of  the 
peculiarly  sordid  nature  of  these  that  are  dominant 
now,  and  even  from  their  own  fierce  vitality  art 
grew,  as  it  cannot  grow  from  conditions  which 
have  in  them  incentive  neither  to  beauty  of  thought 
nor  beauty  of  form.  Whatever  we  do  now,  we 
do  consciously,  and  our  art,  if  we  have  any,  must 
be  an  aHen,  not  a  logical  growth.  By  and  by 
conditions  may  change,  and  we  may  find  our  art 
bursting  forth  of  its  own  impulse.  For  the  time 
being,  however,  we  must  be,  not  the  niouthpieces 
of  a  generation,  but  voices  crying  in  the  wilderness. 
As  a  result  of  this  unfortunate  state  of  things, 
we  must  expect  all  manner  of  opposition  and 
obstruction;  clergy  who  will  have  no  east  win- 
dows in  their  churches  lest  some  shade  of  expres- 
sion on  their  faces  be  lost  to  the  congregation; 
who  insist  that  there  must  be  no  columns,  since 
these  might  block  the  view  of  the  pulpit  from  some 
202 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

seat;  who  stipulate  for  clear  light  in  every  part 
of  the  church,  with  no  shadows,  no  mystery;  who 
demand  a  parish  house  with  bowling  alley  and 
gymnasium,  kitchen,  club  rooms  and  "rummage- 
sale  room,"  a  church  being  attached  at  one  corner 
in  an  unobtrusive  way.  We  shall  find  clearly 
defined  theories  as  to  the  purity  of  " Early  English" 
types;  the  essential  wickedness  of  altar-pieces, 
candlesticks,  and  side  chapels;  the  law  of  acoustics, 
the  beauty  of  quarry-faced  stone  and  field  boulders 
as  building  material.  These  things  must  be; 
they  are  part  of  an  architect's  experience;  but  if 
he  meets  them  as  obstacles  to  be  overcome,  not  as 
conditions  to  be  blindly  accepted,  they  will  in  the 
end  vanish  away. 

For  in  our  hands  we  hold,  I  firmly  believe,  a 
power  so  vast  in  its  possibilities  that  I  hardly  dare 
formulate  it.  There  are  many  men  who  hold  that 
our  civilization  is  but  one  step  removed  from 
anarchy  and  collapse,  and  that  the  Church,  One, 
Holy,  Catholic,  and  Apostolic,  holds  the  key  to 
the  situation;  that  she  alone  may  gain  the  influence 
203 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

over  society  that  will  turn  back  the  tide  of  destiny, 
and  avert  the  catastrophe  that  now  seems  almost 
inevitable.  However  this  may  be,  most  of  you 
will,  I  think,  admit  that  without  the  influence  of 
Christianity,  wreck  would  stare  us  in  the  face. 
Well,  without  conceit  or  presumption,  I  say  un- 
hesitatingly that  I  believe  from  my  soul  that 
architects  have  power  second  only  to  that  of 
Bishops,  priests,  and  monks  to  extend  that  in- 
fluence to  its  farthest  bounds.  He  was  a  wise 
man,  and  he  knew  the  power  of  art  who  said: 
"Let  me  make  the  songs  of  the  nation,  and  I  care 
not  who  makes  the  laws."  Through  architecture 
and  its  allied  arts  we  have  the  power  to  bend  men 
and  sway  them,  as  few  have  who  depend  on  spoken 
words.  The  artist  expresses  the  subtle  emotions, 
satisfies  the  strange  hunger  of  the  soul  as  speakers 
fail  to  do.  With  art  as  her  aid  Christianity  swept 
over  Europe.  With  art  discarded,  rejected,  the 
domain  of  the  Church  waned  and  fell  away.  It 
is  for  us,  as  a  part  of  our  duty,  as  our  highest 
privilege,  to  act  once  more  with  the  Church  for 
204 


BUILDING    OF    CHURCHES 

the  combating  of  false  civilization,  for  the  spread- 
ing of  that  which  is  true. 

This  is  what  I  conceive  Church  Architecture  to 
mean,  and  viewed  so,  that  art  which  we  have  chosen 
becomes  almost  a  sacred  trust,  that  portion  of  it 
which  is  given  to  the  service  of  God,  through  the 
Christian  Church,  a  religion. 

Let  us  recognize  the  great  and  glorious  fact  that 
the  Church  is,  that  persecution  and  spoliation, 
heresy  and  schism,  anarchy,  atheism,  and  revo- 
lution, have  been  powerless  to  effect  her  downfall. 
She  stands  as  she  has  stood  for  nineteen  hundred 
years,  immutable,  indestructible  in  her  spirit  and 
her  essence;  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to- 
morrow. Civic  ideals,  industrial  standards,  com- 
mercial methods,  change  and  pass  away,  she  alone 
remains. 

So  let  us,  all  of  us  who  look  farther  than  to-day, 
who  love  our  art  as  an  eternal  service  of  God, 
begin  our  counter  reformation,  our  glorious  restora- 
tion. Let  us  remember  the  name  and  services  of 
the  immortal  Architect-Bishop,  William  of  Wyke- 
205 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

ham,  and  found  our  society  pledged  to  work  for 
the  eternal  in  architecture,  not  for  the  evanescent; 
a  society  of  men  who  in  the  fear  of  God  are  pledged 
to  work  humbly  and  loyally  for  His  glory  in  the 
building  of  churches;  bound  in  honour  to  follow 
conscience,  history  and  law,  not  fleeting  fashion, 
in  the  work  we  do,  and  so  pledged  to  take  up  the 
great  and  wonderful  style  he  created,  and  develop 
it  as  he  would  have  done,  so  that  every  church  so 
built  may  say  to  all  the  world  and  to  all  future 
time,  "I  was  built  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord  by  the 
Wykehamites,  that  God  might  be  honoured  in  the 
sight  of  men,  and  that  His  Church  might  stand 
faultless  before  them,  as  the  one  great  and  inde- 
structible power  that  rests  above  the  vacillations 
of  fashion  and  the  mutation  of  human  society." 


206 


THE  INTERIOR  DECORATION 
OF  CHURCHES 


THE    INTERIOR    DECORATION 
OF    CHURCHES 

'  I  ^HE  whole  question  of  the  interior  decoration 
of  houses  of  public  worship  is  so  intimately 
connected  with  architecture  that,  except  in  the 
case  of  doing  over  an  old  yet  indestructible  edifice, 
it  seems  impossible  to  sever  it  from  the  greater 
question  of  church  architecture  itself.  Yet  there 
are  certain  principles  underlying  it  all  that  main- 
tain in  every  case,  and  these  hold  as  well  in  the 
renovation  of  a  barn-like  church  or  meeting-house 
as  in  the  creation  of  a  cathedral. 

That  this  question  of  the  artistic  expression  of 
concrete  religious  faith  should  come  up  at  these 
conferences  on  religious  education  is  very  sig- 
nificant. Twenty  years  ago,  when  I  first  began 
the  study  of  church  architecture,  this  particular 
and  most  noble  branch  of  my  profession  was,  I 
209 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

suppose,  in  about  its  most  grievous  case,  so  far  as 
America  was  concerned:  the  respectable  and  most 
sincere  colonial  tradition  had  long  since  disap- 
peared, the  Jeffersonian  Classical  imitations  had 
followed  suit,  the  Gothic  revival  which  resulted 
for  a  time  in  serious,  dignified,  and  self-respecting 
churches,  such  as  Trinity  in  New  York  and  the 
Central  Church  here  in  Boston,  had  been  utterly 
submerged  by  Richardson's  flaming  but  some- 
what heterodox  genius;  and  the  results  in  the 
hands  of  men  who  were  not  Richardsons  —  and 
few  were  —  were  lamentable  beyond  expression. 
There  are  examples  not  a  thousand  feet  from 
where  I  stand  that  make  a  mock  of  Christianity 
and  civilization. 

Well,  the  result  of  all  this  was  that  the  idea  came 
into  being  that  chm"ch  architecture  was,  after  all, 
simply  a  matter  of  fashion,  to  be  changed  pre- 
cisely as  one  changed  the  bulge  in  the  sleeves  of  a 
gown,  or  the  subtle  curves  in  the  brim  of  a  silk 
hat;  and  the  result  of  that  was,  that  the  fatal 
heresy  inherent  in  the  assumption  that  there  was 

2IO 


DECORATION    OF    CHURCHES 

no  intimate  connection  between  the  art  and  the 
thing  expressed,  a  heresy  that  had  maintained 
itself  for  several  centuries,  received  yet  another 
lease  of  life,  and  the  day  of  the  discovery  that  art 
is  a  result  and  not  a  product,  a  language  and  not 
an  accessory,  was  still  further  delayed.  We  know 
now  that  this  long-established  fiction  is  one  of  the 
very  falsest  things  in  all  the  world,  but  our  case  is 
still  desperate,  for  the  one  institution  into  which 
any  inkling  of  the  newly  discovered  truth  has  not 
crept  is  the  school  of  architecture,  and  however 
much  a  religious  society  may  desire  a  fitting  out- 
ward manifestation,  how  is  it  to  obtain  this  so 
long  as  the  schools  where  architects  are  made 
tacitly  maintain  that  churches  are  of  no  importance 
anyway,  either  socially  or  artistically.  To  them 
it  is  important  that  their  students  should  design 
a  five-million-dollar  palace  for  the  President  of  a 
Republic,  or  a  ten-million-dollar  structure  for  the 
housing  of  a  school  of  fine  arts,  but  that  the  pro- 
spective practitioners  who  conceivably  may  never 
be  called  upon   to  exercise  their  genius  in   the 

211 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

designing  of  either,  should  have  their  minds  turned 
now  and  then  to  the  problem  of  a  village  or  city 
church,  is  an  idea  that  does  not  seem  to  appeal  to 
them  forcibly.  Nor  is  this  surprising;  there  never 
was,  and  there  never  will  be,  but  one  highly  or- 
ganized and  perfectly  developed  style  for  building 
a  Christian  Church,  and  that  is  Gothic;  and  Gothic 
to  the  schools,  though  of  some  very  slight  interest 
historically,  is  yet  barbarism  and  anathema  ma- 
ranatha.  Perhaps  this  is  more  nearly  true  of  con- 
ditions five  years  ago  than  it  is  now :  I  confess  with 
profound  satisfaction  to  finding  in  school  publica- 
tions an  increasing  number  of  essays  in  ecclesias- 
tical design,  and  I  really  think  the  day  may  be  at 
hand  when  Christianity  will  be  recognized  by  the 
architectural  departments  of  our  great  schools  as 
a  power  of  some  slight  moment  in  modern  life. 

That  it  is  this,  and  increasingly,  is  a  fact  too 
patent  for  comment,  and  as  art  has  owed  its  very 
existence  to  religion,  and  must  continue  doing  so 
to  the  end  of  time,  so  is  the  converse  true,  that 
religion  finds  its  visible  expression   through  the 

212 


DECORATION    OF   CHURCHES 

art  it  has  created  for  its  service.  You  cannot 
dissociate  the  two  without  infinite  injury  to  both. 
Our  Puritan  ancestors  and  the  emancipated 
genius  of  the  present  age  are  at  one  in  this,  and  the 
painters  and  architects  who  think  to  survive,  aloof 
from  all  religious  influence,  will  fail  just  as  signally 
as  the  iconoclasts  and  vandals  of  the  sixteenth 
century  failed  in  their  warfare  against  beauty  and 
its  symbolism  and  its  didacticism  and  its  pro- 
phetic faculty. 

Religion  simply  cannot  get  along  without  art, 
not  because  art  is  fashionable  and  a  facile  means 
of  emulation,  but  because  it  is  at  the  one  time  both 
a  science  and  a  manifestation.  And  by  "art"  I 
do  not  mean  such  passing  whimsy  of  society  as 
may  for  the  moment  be  the  vogue,  but  the  eternal, 
indestructible  principle  of  beauty  which  is  as 
definite  a  thing  as  the  procession  of  the  equinoxes. 
There  was  a  time  when  an  instinct  for  beauty  was 
the  heritage  of  every  human  being:  the  effort  to 
separate  religion  from  art,  and  man  from  religion, 
has  resulted  in  changing  all  that,  and  now  there 
213 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

is  no  art  instinct  among  any  civilized  people  except 
the  Japanese:  hence,  the  lamentable  falling  back 
upon  professional  artists,  of  whatever  special  call- 
ing —  who  nine  times  out  of  ten,  though  perhaps 
highly  trained,  are  yet  just  as  deficient  in  the 
instinct  for  beauty  as  those  who  call  them  into 
their  service.  We  have,  for  instance,  the  eccle- 
siastical decorator  and  furnisher,  with  his  brass 
pulpits,  ingenious  stained  glass  and  tawdry  em- 
broidery, his  egregious  carved  oak  altars  and  spun 
brass  candlesticks,  his  glittering  mosaics,  and 
above  all  his  remarkable  schemes  for  colour 
decoration.  He  advertises  copiously,  and  his 
name  stands  perhaps  for  all  that  is  "rich  and 
elegant,"  but  really  he  is  an  aflfliction,  for  there  is 
neither  religious  feeling  nor  reliable  instinct  be- 
hind him.  And  it  is  the  same  way  with  architects: 
we  claim  to  know  it  all,  but  the  best  of  us  could 
not  bring  into  existence  a  church  that  would  be 
worthy  to  stand  beside  some  simple  chapel,  paced 
out  on  the  turf  by  a  monk  or  friar,  and  built  by 
the  common  masons  of  the  neighbourhood,  built 
214 


DECORATION    OF   CHURCHES 

and  decorated  too,  for  the  carving  we  now  pore 
over  with  awe,  the  crocket  or  capital,  bruised  and 
marred  as  it  is,  at  the  hands  of  Henry's  or  Crom- 
well's destroyers,  was  carved  by  the  journeyman  or 
the  apprentice  who  at  other  times  was  hewing 
blocks  or  mixing  mortar. 

Yet  beauty  in  the  service  of  God  we  must  have: 
must,  and  the  need  is  absolute.  Nothing  we  pos- 
sess is  really  worthy  to  be  used  in  God's  service, 
but  by  some  miracle  or  other,  some  manifestation 
of  infinite  Wisdom,  it  happens  that  the  labour  of 
love  and  devotion,  the  pains  spent  to  bring  forth 
absolute  beauty,  as  well  as  that  beauty  itself,  serve 
to  give  a  new  value  to  a  knot  of  wood  or  a  knob 
of  stone;  and  this  value  is  so  great  that  if  it  were 
possible  the  product  thus  obtained  is  in  a  way 
worthy  of  the  service  to  which  it  is  called.  Beauty, 
then,  and  perfection,  are  utterly  inseparable  from 
the  idea  of  an  acceptable  church,  and  beauty  and 
perfection  we  must  have. 

"But  how,"  you  say,  "since,  if  you  do  not  lie, 
these  are  things  which  no  professional  artist  is 
215 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

able  to  give?"  The  answer  is  easy:  by  demanding 
the  best,  and  taking  nothing  else.  For  art  must 
be  good,  or  it  is  worse  than  nothing.  It  may  be 
fallible,  partial,  inadequate,  but  if  it  is  following 
the  right  lines,  if  it  is  sincere  and  whole-hearted, 
it  is  at  least  tolerable,  and  tending  in  the  right 
direction.  The  cheap  and  showy  abominations 
that  do  duty  in  commerce  as  ecclesiastical  decora- 
tion are  not  this,  and  they  lie  beyond  the  pale: 
they  are  impossible. 

Art  is  a  service  and  a  factor  in  education:  in 
either  of  its  aspects  it  must  be  of  the  best  obtain- 
able, or  it  is  evil.  Here  is  one  place  at  least  where 
substitutes  are  out  of  the  question.  In  its  first 
function  it  is  the  intrinsically  precious,  the  labori- 
ously fashioned,  the  exquisitely  perfected,  that 
alone  is  admissible:  makeshifts,  imitations,  are 
ruled  out  of  court,  and  economical  devices  for 
obtaining  fallacious  appearances,  labour-saving 
expedients  and  cheap  substitutes,  are  impious,  and 
tinged  by  sacrilege.  This  is  not  the  place  here  to 
elaborate  this  very  sound  doctrine,  but  it  is 
216 


DECORATION   OF    CHURCHES 

very  surely  the  time  to  lay  stress  on  the  educational 
value  of  art,  and  to  say  that  here,  as  in  all  educa- 
tion, the  best  obtainable  is  none  too  good. 

Really,  I  believe  that  art  —  that  is,  concrete 
and  absolute  beauty,  acting  as  a  system  of 
spiritual  and  psychological  influence  —  's  per- 
haps the  greatest  teaching  agency,  the  greatest 
because  the  most  subtle  and  penetrating  in  its 
power,  man  has  ever  developed.  We  try  to 
make  our  churches  beautiful  and  intrinsically 
precious  because  beauty  and  intrinsic  worth  are  a 
kind  of  sacrifice,  an  oblation  poured  out  before 
God;  but  we  make  them  this  as  well  because  one 
fact  that  runs  through  all  earthly  experience  is  that 
the  lasting  lessons  come  through  the  mediumship 
of  the  soul  as  well  as  through  that  of  the  mind. 
Why  else  did  we  for  thousands  of  years  hold  art 
and  religion  to  be  inseparable  terms  ?  The  Spartan 
doctrine  of  the  Puritan  propaganda  for  white- 
wash made  indeed  a  certain  plausible  appeal  to 
the  intellect,  but  for  once  this  latter  attribute  of 
humanity  was  wrong,  as  we  have  found  to  our 
217 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

cost.  From  the  first  rough  "sgraffiti"  sketched 
on  the  walls  of  the  catacombs,  and  the  first  simple 
hymns  sung  softly  within  their  gloom,  there  was  a 
steady  and  unbroken  advance  in  recognition  of 
the  infinite  and  indispensable  powers  of  art  in  the 
service  of  religion  until  the  sixteenth  century, 
when,  with  the  very  first  years,  there  came  a 
change,  and,  to  its  eternal  disgrace,  and  the  im- 
measurable injury  of  the  world,  the  great  move- 
ment for  ethical  reform  became  identified  with 
that  other,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  case, 
the  destruction  of  art.  At  that  time,  whatever  we 
may  think  of  the  ethical  and  theological  conditions, 
art  in  the  service  of  religion,  art  as  a  great  teach- 
ing factor,  had  reached  its  highest  point;  archi- 
tecture, painting,  sculpture,  music  and  handicraft, 
guided  and  fostered  by  the  Church,  had  become 
things  of  wonder  and  amazement,  and  united,  had 
brought  into  existence  the  great  and  perfect  cere- 
monial which  was  one  of  the  glories  of  the  time. 
The  liturgies  of  Medisevalism,  the  splendid  ritual 
of  the  undivided  Church,  the  majestic  ceremonial- 
218 


DECORATION   OF   CHURCHES 

ism  that  marked  its  every  act,  what  were  they? 
Judging  from  the  attitude  of  some  most  excellent 
people  nowadays,  who  manfully  contend  against 
every  effort  to  restore  them  again,  they  were  some 
very  awful  form  of  sorcery  or  magic  that  pos- 
sessed a  demoniac  power  of  bending  men's  minds 
in  bondage  to  some  kind  of  base  obsession.  Actu- 
ally, however,  they  were  simply  art,  a  mark  of 
man's  supremacy  in  creation,  co-ordinated,  blended, 
composed  into  a  great  and  consistent  whole,  and 
employed  for  the  glory  of  God  and  the  teaching 
of  His  children.  There  was  once,  and  not  so 
long  ago,  furious  opposition  to  the  use  of  organ 
music  in  churches,  to  trained  and  vested  choirs, 
to  musical  services,  to  painted  windows,  pictures 
and  statues  of  saints,  even  to  the  very  Emblem 
of  Redemption;  all  this  has  passed,  for  common 
sense  has  shown  that  the  opposition  was  simply 
to  art  in  its  highest  form,  and  art  is  one  of  the 
greatest  blessings  and  marks  of  civilization. 
Little  by  little,  if  we  remain  Christians,  we  shall 
build  up  again  the  majestic  liturgies  of  the  past, 
219 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

eliminate  from  them  the  corruptions  and  the 
tawdriness  that  have  taken  the  place  of  sound 
principles  among  those  who  have  retained  the 
forms,  yet  suffered  from  the  universal  artistic 
degeneration  that  came  when  the  reformers  proved 
themselves  incompetent  to  discriminate  between 
a  corrupted  doctrine  and  an  uncorrupted  ritual, 
involving  both  in  a  common  condemnation.  The 
Anglican  Church  in  England  and  America, 
Presbyterianism  in  Scotland,  and  Lutheranism 
on  the  Continent  and  with  us,  are  all  working 
slowly  and  consistently  toward  this  end,  and  in 
almost  all  the  denominations  the  leaven  is  work- 
ing. The  time  is  close  at  hand  when  this  form 
of  co-ordinated  art,  and  the  highest  form,  will  be 
operative  again,  acting  as  a  great  educational 
agency,  and  as  well  working  silently  but  power- 
fully towards  this  most  desirable  of  consumma- 
tions, the  reunion  of  Christendom. 

I  speak  of  this  here  and  at  length,  for  I  deliber- 
ately broaden  the  scope  of  the  subject  given  me, 
until  it  covers  the  question  of  all  the  arts  in  their 
220 


DECORATION    OF    CHURCHES 

relation  to  religion,  for  except  we  grasp  the  idea  of 
their  indivisibility,  we  cannot  establish  any  sound 
basis  for  determining  the  nature  of  the  art  we  must 
use  in  making  our  houses  of  public  worship,  "all 
beautiful  within."  We  may  paint  and  carve  and 
decorate  them  until  they  rival  the  vision  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  but  if  we  refuse  the  final  con- 
centration and  glory  of  a  liturgy  which  is  governed 
and  vitalized  by  the  same  artistic  principles,  we 
have  but  an  empty  jewel  box;  exquisite,  it  may 
be,  but  useless. 

Here  we  reach  a  first  and  general  principle; 
the  artistic  treatment  of  a  church  interior  must 
depend,  not  upon  the  taste  or  the  wealth  of  a  given 
congregation,  but  upon  the  nature  of  the  visible 
methods  of  worship,  for  the  including  of  which 
the  building  had  been  erected.  Puritanism  was 
logical,  granting  its  premises,  logical  and  con- 
sistent; it  eliminated  art  from  its  public  services, 
and  therefore  it  refused  art  in  the  treatment  of  its 
temples.  This  was  a  sane  and  rational  thing  to 
do.    The    white-washed    meeting-house,    void .  of 

221 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  least  hint  of  art  of  every  shape  and  kind, 
fitted  perfectly  the  Puritan  service  from  which 
art  had  been  banished  in  equal  measure.  Now 
conditions  are  changing.  Art,  scorned  and  hu- 
miliated for  several  centuries,  is  coming  once 
more  into  favour.  It  is  felt  that,  if  the  liturgical 
churches  are  becoming  once  more  redolent  of 
beauty,  the  non-liturgical  should  not  fall  behind, 
and  pictures,  sculpture,  carving,  stained  glass  and 
music  are  put  under  requisition  as  they  were  of 
old.  Good!  but  it  seems  to  me  there  is  danger 
of  misrepresentation  here,  a  danger  not  always 
avoided.  To  duplicate  in  a  non-liturgical  and 
rigorously  Evangelical  church  the  ornamenta- 
tion appropriate  to  another  that  is  Sacramental 
in  its  doctrine  and  liturgical  in  its  worship,  is  at 
least  ungrammatical.  Frank  and  honest  exposi- 
tion of  principle  and  doctrine  is  one  of  the  first  of 
the  functions  of  art  in  relation  to  religion.  For  the 
Roman  and  Anglican  communions  there  is  no 
limit  to  what  may  possibly  be  done,  but  elsewhere, 
it  seems  to  me,  good  taste  and  consistency  rather 

222 


DECORATION    OF    CHURCHES 

demand  a  measure  of  restraint,  for  the  time  being 
at  least. 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  mean  that  because  art 
was  once  cast  away  it  must  be  denied  forever. 
Just  as  good  art  may  be  used  logically  to  express 
the  function  of  a  Congregational  or  Baptist  or 
Methodist  church,  as  is  the  case  with  Rome  or 
Episcopalianism,  it  is  different,  that  is  all. 

This  seems  to  me,  then,  the  first  law :  consistency, 
honesty,  courage  of  convictions,  art  recognized  as 
a  language,  and  used  as  such  to  express  definite 
principles  definitely.  And  the  second  law  is  the 
law  of  fastidiousness;  willingness  to  accept  only 
the  best:  —  the  best  materials,  the  best  workman- 
ship, and  above  all  the  best  art.  Now  it  is  easy 
to  get  good  materials  by  paying  for  them,  and  it  is 
better  not  to  have  anything  at  all  if  we  are  un- 
willing to  make  the  sacrifices  necessary  to  obtain 
the  best.  It  is  also  possible,  though  I  admit 
difficult,  to  get  the  highest  class  of  workmanship, 
not  such  indeed  as  in  the  twelfth  century,  for 
instance,  the  masons  wrought  in  building  the 
223 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

great  Abbey  of  Glastonbury;  some  day,  under 
different  economic  conditions,  we  may  have 
this  again,  but  not  now.  Perfection,  however, 
is  not  imperative,  but  effort;  if  we  demand  and 
pay  for  the  best  available,  we  have  done  honour- 
ably and  well,  but  if  we  try  to  make  a  show  with 
imitation  marble,  trick  mosaics,  make-believe 
metals,  papier  mache  and  plaster  casts;  or  if,  in 
order  to  get  as  much  for  our  money  as  possible, 
we  accept  any  kind  of  cheap  workmanship  what- 
ever, we  are  violating  the  laws  of  good  art,  and 
therefore  of  good  morals. 

Now  about  the  best  art:  I  am  not  here  to  give 
a  few  easy  rules  for  testing  the  design  of  a  pulpit, 
or  altar,  or  stained-glass  window;  to  explain  how 
colours  should  be  mixed  or  placed  in  juxtaposi- 
tion; to  demonstrate  the  proper  principles  and 
limits  of  decoration  in  a  Gothic  church,  a  Georgian 
meeting-house,  or  a  Christian  Science  tabernacle. 
These  are  the  province  of  the  architect  employed 
to  do  a  given  piece  of  work,  and  to  the  architect, 
willy-nilly,  must  you  go,  until  those  happier  times 
224 


DECORATION    OF    CHURCHES 

are  come  again  when  art  is  once  more  so  much  a 
part  of  civiHzation  that  the  clergyman,  the  house- 
holder, and  the  stone-mason  all  come  once  again 
so  fully  into  their  heritage  of  the  instinct  for  beauty 
that  each  is  himself  an  artist  and  architect,  and  a 
better  man  than  any  to-day.  Between  1500  and 
1550  this  condition  ceased,  for  the  first  time  in 
recorded  history.  We  are  permitted  to  believe 
the  time  may  come  again.  Meanwhile  —  well, 
meanwhile  we  must  do  our  best  with  the  rough 
tools  at  hand,  the  architect,  the  painter,  the  sculp- 
tor, the  maker  of  stained  glass,  the  craftsman  in 
metals,  yes,  and  the  "  Ecclesiastical  Decorator  and 
Furnisher;"  but  we  must  remember  that  these,  and 
the  best  of  these,  are  blind  leaders  of  the  blind, 
for  they  also  walk  in  the  darkness  that  fell  when 
the  light  of  art  went  out.  Yet  they  are  trying, 
and  honestly,  to  come  back  into  the  light;  by 
thought  and  arduous  labour,  and,  some  of  them, 
by  heartfelt  prayers  as  well,  they  are  striving  for 
their  heritage,  and  if  you  hold  them  to  their  dim 
ideals,  they  may  achieve,  and  serve  you  not  only 
225 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

faithfully,  but  well.  But  the  assumption  of  a 
title,  or  the  publication  of  an  advertisement,  is  not 
a  guaranty  of  ability:  there  are  good,  bad,  and 
indifferent  practitioners  in  every  branch  of  art, 
and  no  layman,  even  though  he  admits  his  igno- 
rance, has  any  right  to  rely  implicitly  on  the  valu- 
ation a  man  puts  on  himself.  How  then  weigh 
conflicting  claims,  and  decide  as  between  architect 
and  architect,  or  decorator  and  decorator?  By  a 
competition  of  schemes  and  a  vote  of  a  building 
committee,  or  a  poll  of  the  congregation  ?  Never ! 
under  any  circumstances  whatever.  How,  then? 
simply  by  recognizing  the  fact  that  from  the  first 
moment  of  recorded  history,  and  whether  in 
Europe  or  Asia,  the  laws  and  principles  of  good 
art  were  absolutely  the  same  whether  expressed 
in  the  lines  of  a  Greek  or  Buddhist  temple,  or  a 
Gothic  cathedral,  and  the  same  is  true  of  every 
other  form  of  art  down  to  some  ill-defined  point 
that  severs  Mediaevalism  from  the  Renaissance, 
and  that  after  that  the  laws  were  entirely  new, 
and,  except  in  music,  literature,  and  the  drama, 
226 


DECORATION    OF    CHURCHES 

just  as  entirely  bad.  This,  then,  is  the  bar  of 
justice  before  which  any  artistic  postulant  for 
favour  must  plead.  If  in  his  words  and  work  he 
shows  that  he  understands,  accepts,  and  tries  to 
follow  the  pre-Renaissance  laws,  then  he  is  the 
man  to  tie  to.  He  may  fail,  and  he  will  fail  to 
produce  work  that  will  rival  that  of  the  great  years, 
but  he  will  not  disgrace  you,  and  through  the 
employment  you  give  him,  and  the  standards  to 
which  you  hold  him,  he  will  go  on  to  better  and 
better  things. 

And  lest  you  misunderstand  me,  let  me  say  that 
acceptance  of  the  laws  does  not  mean  in  my  mind 
acceptance  of  the  forms.  I  can  imagine  a  building 
and  its  ornament,  exterior  and  interior,  in  which 
should  appear  no  single  form,  moulding  or  piece 
of  carving,  the  genesis  of  which  could  be  traced 
to  any  given  period  of  the  past,  which  should, 
nevertheless,  be  so  dominated  by  the  eternal  laws 
of  beauty  in  composition,  form,  and  decoration 
that  it  would  be  equally  good  with  the  best  that 
ever  was.  Shifting  and  ever-changing  modes  are 
227 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

one  thing,  underlying  laws  are  quite  another,  and 
the  latter  are  the  things  that  count. 

You  see  it  is,  after  all,  and  must  be,  a  matter  of 
general  principles:  it  is  impossible  to  separate  the 
question  of  interior  decoration  of  churches  from 
that  of  their  outward  and  visible  form  and  their 
inward  and  spiritual  grace.  It  is  a  great  question, 
perhaps  architecturally  the  greatest,  since  a  church 
is  the  noblest  structure  that  man  may  build;  from 
the  standpoint  of  religion,  doctrine,  and  education, 
the  problem  is  unparalleled  in  its  importance.  I 
am  only  pleading  for  this  priority,  asserting  the 
persistence  and  immutability  of  law,  and  con- 
demning the  new  doctrine  that  it  is  all  a  matter  of 
fashion  or  taste,  and  that  in  art  every  man  has  a 
right  to  say  that  though  he  knows  nothing  of  art, 
he  does  know  what  he  likes.  This  last  statement 
may  be  perfectly  true,  but  it  doesn't  matter  and 
has  no  possible  bearing  on  the  case.  It  isn't  what 
one  man  or  a  congregation  of  men  and  women 
likes,  it  is  what  is  good,  that  is  worthy  of  acceptance, 
and  to  the  determination  of  this  question,  personal 
228 


DECORATION    OF   CHURCHES 

predilections  are  inoperative.  Probably  the  ma- 
jority of  people  like  Hoffman  Bible  pictures  done 
in  opalescent  glass,  glittering  and  richly  wrought 
pulpits  of  lacquered  brass,  gold  leaf  and  Dutch 
metal  gummed  on  jig-sawed  fretwork,  yet  even 
an  unanimous  consensus  of  opinion  could  not 
make  these  things  other  than  what  they  are,  — 
abominations.  As  things  are  now,  the  general 
instinct  in  art  is  quite  wrong,  and  the  artist,  what- 
ever the  category  into  which  his  labours  fall,  who 
contents  himself  with  filling  a  demand,  is  the  last 
man  on  earth  in  whom  to  trust.  Test  the 
work  of  available  men  by  the  indestructible 
laws  that  underlay  the  art  of  the  race  while 
there  was  organic  art.  Choose  any  man  who 
seems  to  base  his  work  on  these  laws,  and  then 
say  to  him:  "We  demand  your  best,  and  the 
best  only;  we  will  hold  you  rigidly  to  certain 
material  requirements  and  limits  of  cost,  but 
we  will  hamper  and  direct  you  otherwise  in 
no  way  whatsoever;  you  are  to  give  us,  not  what 
we  think  we  want,  hut  what  you  know  we  ought 
229 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

to    have:    history    will    hold    your    memory   re- 
sponsible for  what  you  do." 

If  you  do  this  you  will  get  good  results;  but  if 
you  go  saying:  "We  want  a  French  Romanesque 
church,  with  transepts  and  a  polygonal  apse, 
with  no  seats  behind  columns,  with  large  windows 
for  picture  glass,  and  space  for  a  $20,000  organ, 
where  the  sound  will  tell  for  every  dollar  it  has 
cost,  and  we  want  the  exterior  of  rock-faced 
ashlar,  and  the  roof  covered  with  red  tiles,"  — 
then  you  will  get  bad  results,  and  they  will  be 
well  deserved. 


230 


THE    CONTEMPORARY    ARCHI- 
TECTURE   OF    THE    ROMAN 
CATHOLIC  CHURCH 


THE   CONTEMPORARY  ARCHITECTURE 

OF  THE   ROMAN   CATHOLIC 

CHURCH 

X~XURING  the  last  quarter  of  this  century  has 
^-^  occurred  a  change  in  the  fortune  of  the 
Roman  CathoHc  Church  in  America,  which  is 
almost  a  transformation;  a  change  which  possesses 
certain  of  the  outward  aspects  of  the  miraculous, 
of  the  supernatural.  Nor  is  this  new  fortune 
visible  in  America  alone;  in  England  it  has  been 
more  brilliant,  more  spectacular,  though  no  more 
vital;  and  the  same  is  true,  in  a  minor  measure,  in 
France*  The  tempest  of  materialism  and  agnos- 
ticism and  atheism  has  spent  its  force,  and  though 
it  has  wrought  ruin  in  many  places,  the  sunlight 

♦Written,  of  course,  before  the  present  French  persecu- 
tions revealed  the  thinness  of  the  shell  of  civilization  above 
the  still  smouldering  fires  of  the  Revolution. 

233 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

already  bursting  through  its  drifting  and  exhausted 
clouds,  fleeing  on  the  wind  of  their  own  suicidal 
violence,  is  fast  turning  its  flood  and  wreck  into 
enormous  agencies  for  recuperation  and  renewed 
life.  Everywhere  are  the  signs  of  freshened  growth 
and  new  and  splendid  strength,  and  nowhere  are 
these  evidences  more  clear  and  convincing  than  in 
the  United  States. 

The  Roman  Catholicism  of  England,  under  the 
exalted  guidance  of  the  four  great  cardinals,  has 
signalized  her  release  from  legal  persecution  by 
stepping  to  the  very  front,  not  only  in  her  first  and 
most  glorious  duty  of  winning  back  to  the  Faith 
a  world  weary  of  the  follies  of  materialism,  but  in 
all  vital  matters  of  social  and  economic  reform, 
and  of  artistic  education  and  direction. 

Here  also  in  the  United  States  the  torch  of  the 
new  life  is  passed  from  hand  to  hand,  and  already 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  assuming  her 
prerogative  of  leadership.  Within  the  last  fifty 
years  she  has  advanced  from  a  position  of  com- 
parative numerical  weakness  to  the  primacy;  she 
234 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

is  claiming  the  right  of  arbitration  between  capital 
and  labour;  she  is  slowly  solving  the  complex 
question  of  Christian  education,  where  the  state 
is  confronted,  after  four  decades  of  experiment, 
with  but  partial  success;  she  is  even  winning  a 
sullen  respect  from  the  sects,  together  with  the 
oblique  tribute  of  their  fear,  where  formerly  was 
only  the  hatred  of  bigotry  and  ignorance.  Thus 
far  she  goes  hand-in-hand  with  the  Church  in 
England;  but  in  one  important  province  she  has 
done  and  is  doing  nothing  —  less  even  than 
nothing;  for  her  influence  thus  far  is  unfortunate, 
her  action  grievously  injurious  to  herself. 

In  England,  since  the  Cathohc  Emancipation  Act, 
and  especially  since  Newman's  "second  spring," 
she  has  steadily  striven  to  stand  visibly  beautiful 
and  august  in  the  eyes  of  men;  her  churches  have 
been  of  the  very  best  that  the  capacity  of  the 
architects  and  artists  of  the  country  allowed,  and 
even  in  districts  comparatively  poor  in  worldly 
wealth  she  has  built  sanctuaries  which  compare 
as  favorably  with  the  glorious  monuments  of  her 
235 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

old  life  as  was  possible  in  an  atmosphere  weak- 
ened and  impoverished  by  three  centuries  of 
aesthetic  as  well  as  ethic  folly.  Since  the  raising 
of  the  present  Archbishop  of  Westminster*  to 
the  Sacred  College,  his  Eminence  has  shown  that 
this  quality  of  leadership  was  by  no  means  to  suffer 
under  his  guidance,  and  that  the  destiny  of  the 
Catholic  Church  as  the  restorer  of  Christian 
beauty  was,  with  the  aid  of  God,  soon  to  be  ac- 
complished; and  such  advance  as  England  makes 
in  the  next  half  century  in  the  domain  of  art  will 
be,  unless  all  signs  prove  futile,  through  the  exer- 
tions of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  and  of  the 
Catholic  party  in  the  Established  Church. 

Therefore,  one  by  one,  in  town  or  city,  the  new 
chvurches  of  the  old  faith  in  England  stand  designed 
by  the  most  capable  architects  available,  enriched 
by  the  work  of  the  most  ingenious  craftsmen  that 
ofifer,  showing  to  the  world  in  every  noble  line 
and  mass  the  devotion  and  the  intelligence  that 
have  created  them. 

*  The  late  Cardinal  Manning. 
236 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

How  utterly,  how  lamentably  different  is  the 
case  in  America!  Advancing  day  by  day  towards 
moral  honour  and  dominion,  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  our  country  is  represented  in  her  archi- 
tecture and  her  art  by  the  most  inartistic  and 
unpardonable  structures  that  anywhere  arise  as 
insults  to  God  and  hindrances  to  spiritual  progress. 

This  may  seem  violent  language,  but  nothing 
is  to  be  gained  by  a  sensitive  glozing  of  facts;  and 
the  truth  is  that,  by  her  art  as  a  whole,  the  Roman 
Church  in  the  United  States  of  America  verily 
appears  what  Puritan  bigotry  declared  her  to  be, 
not  what  she  is  in  fact. 

It  is  true  that  ecclesiastical  architecture  is  at  a 
lower  ebb  in  America  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
world,  Germany  alone  excepted.  But  we  do  not 
ask  for  work  which  shall  compare  with  the  most 
beautiful  sanctuaries  reared  under  different  con- 
ditions in  England;  we  do  expect,  however,  work 
which  shall  at  least  equal  that  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  and  the  Protestant  denominations,  and 
that  we  do  not  find.  On  the  contrary,  if  a 
237 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Roman  Catholic  who  knows  something  of  art 
and  loves  beauty  goes  into  an  unfamiHar  town  or 
city,  he  is  perfectly  well  aware  that  he  has  but  to 
pick  out  the  barest,  commonest  red  brick  and 
granite  structure  that  thrusts  itself  onto  the  side- 
walk, and  he  will  have  found  his  own  church. 
It  is  possible  to  lament  this  fact,  not  to  deny 
or  palliate  it. 

Let  me  describe  two  churches  with  which  I  am 
acquainted  in  one  of  our  eastern  states;  they  repre- 
sent very  accurately  the  average  in  this  region.  The 
first  is  in  one  of  the  largest  cities  of  a  vast  diocese. 
It  is  in  no  architectural  style  whatever,  but  of  a 
quality  of  design  on  which  any  educated  archi- 
tect would  look  with  horror.  It  is  shapeless  and 
monstrous,  built  of  a  smooth  face-brick  with 
cheap  brownstone  trimmings;  bands  of  black  and 
fancy  brick  deface  its  walls;  the  arches  of  its 
gaunt  windows  are  double  segmental,  in  the 
vulgar  fashion  of  1870;  trivial  buttresses,  weak 
and  useless  columns,  ready-made  carvings,  insult 
the  intelligence  at  every  point.  Outwardly,  it  is 
238 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

bald  and  vulgar;  it  has  the  appearance  of  a  grain 
elevator  overlaid  with  ready-made  impertinences 
which  delude  themselves  into  thinking  they  are 
ornaments. 

Inside  the  effect  is  worse:  the  columns  are  cylin- 
ders of  polished  Scotch  granite  and  Quincy  granite 
alternately;  the  capitals  are  cast  iron,  painted  with 
bronze  paint;  the  walls  are  stencilled  in  olive 
green  and  a  reddish  magenta,  in  the  foolish  and 
violent  patterns  which  fifteen  years  ago  were,  in 
some  quarters,  considered  "high  art";  the  win- 
dows are  filled  with  loud  Munich  glass  in  colours, 
which  set  one's  teeth  on  edge.  From  the  garishly 
frescoed  ceiling,  which  follows  the  slope  of  the 
high-pitched  roof,  and  is  broken  by  frivolous 
trusses,  the  iron  portions  of  which  are  painted 
with  bronze  powder,  hang  the  chandeliers  of 
stamped  brass,  vividly  lacquered;  the  pews  are  of 
yellow  chestnut,  their  ends  sawed  into  fantastic 
patterns,  with  discs  of  cheap,  imitation  marble 
set  in.  In  the  sanctuary  stands  the  high  altar 
of  bluish-white  marble,  ready-made,  and  in  its 
239 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

frantic  elaboration  looking,  alas!  like  a  glorified 
soda  fountain.  The  altars  of  the  Blessed  Virgin 
and  St.  Joseph  are  in  the  same  foolish  style,  and 
over  each  stands  an  image  painted  in  the  crudest 
colours. 

I  took  an  Unitarian  to  this  church  once,  for  the 
rector  is  a  noble  priest,  eloquent  and  benign;  while 
the  music,  though  excessively  modern,  is  perfectly 
rendered.  Afterwards  he  said:  "You  may  as 
well  stop  trying  to  convert  me  from  Unitarianisra 
unless  you  can  take  me  to  some  place  where  I  am 
not  struck  deaf  and  blind  by  artistic  horrors." 
And  he  would  never  go  to  this  particular  church 
again. 

The  second  example  stands  in  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  suburbs  of  Boston.  Money  was  cer- 
tainly not  wanting  for  an  excellent  church;  there 
was  an  extraordinary  amount  appropriated.  This 
is  what  exists:  a  high,  narrow  barn  of  bright  red 
brick,  laid  in  black  mortar;  the  trimmings  of  white 
granite,  the  jig-sawed  window-tracery  painted 
grey  and  sanded.  The  roof  is  of  red,  green,  and 
240 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

black  slate,  laid  in  crazy  patterns;  the  absurd 
tower  at  the  west  end  turns  at  the  top  into  a  frenzy 
of  galvanized  iron;  and  the  high  spire  is  covered 
with  elaborate  metallic  shingles.  The  interior  is 
a  desert,  with  its  little  iron  columns,  fantastical 
arches,  bare  walls,  all  painted  and  kalsomined  a 
staring  white,  then  lined  off  with  black  to  repre- 
sent marble.  The  Stations  of  the  Cross  are 
inconceivably  hideous.  A  large  and  most  remark- 
able copy  of  Titian's  "Assumption"  hangs  over 
the  high  altar,  which  is  made  of  imitation  marble, 
picked  out  with  gilding,  and  perenially  desecrated 
with  artificial  flowers. 

As  one  drives  through  the  green  woods  of  the 
village,  the  apparition  of  this  monstrous  structure, 
standing  in  a  dusty  quadrangle,  is  simply  shocking, 
and  the  effect  of  the  interior  so  garish  that  the 
devotional  spirit  of  the  average  mortal  is  instantly 
extinguished. 

In  the  city  where  the  first  example  stands  there 
are  many  other  religious  edifices  almost  as  bad; 
notably  a  Baptist  chapel,  and  two  belonging  to  the 
241 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Methodists.  But  these  were  all  built  twenty  years 
ago,  while  the  other  is  but  a  few  years  old;  built 
at  the  very  time  when  the  local  Episcopalians  and 
Presbyterians  were  testifying  in  stone  to  their 
own  sagacity  and  the  supreme  genius  of  their 
architects. 

In  the  village  where  the  second  example  turns 
the  harmony  of  a  beautiful  landscape  into  grating 
discord  there  is  nothing  comparable  to  it,  while 
there  is  an  Episcopal  church  that  might  have  been 
built  in  the  fifteenth  century  in  Warwickshire, 
and  an  Unitarian  structure  which  is  a  perpetual 
delight,  and  which  draws  every  Sunday  scores  of 
people  who  care  nothing  for  the  particular  tenets 
of  the  denomination,  but  who  find  a  certain  hap- 
piness in  its  cool  and  chaste  interior,  and  its  i\y- 
covered  walls  rising  amid  great  elms. 

These  new  churches  are  fair  samples  of  what 
one  may  find  in  New  England,  a  section  of  country 
which  is  weary  of  Puritanism  and  its  reaction,  and 
is  reaching  out  towards  Catholicism  again.  Can 
such  temples  help  convince  the  searchers  after 
242 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

God  of  the  majesty  of  the  Catholic  Faith?  can 
they  draw  the  brilliantly  educated,  refined,  trav- 
elled infidels  and  agnostics  through  appeals  to 
their  cramped  and  starved  emotionalism?  If  the 
Roman  Catholic  architecture  of  to-day  represented 
exactly  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  of  to-day, 
silence  might  be  commendable;  but  it  is  the  very 
fact  that  it  does  not  do  so,  but  that  on  the  contrary 
it  misrepresents  it  maliciously  and  fatally,  which 
makes  scorn  and  invective  the  only  resort  of  a 
critic  with  an  honest  heart. 

To  the  traveller  fresh  from  Europe,  filled  with 
the  memory  of  the  immortal  Gothic  monuments 
of  the  Catholic  faith  in  the  British  Isles  (empty, 
swept,  and  garnished,  it  is  true,  but  still  ineffably 
beautiful  with  the  beauty  of  the  sleeping  princess 
in  the  fairy  tale),  filled  also  with  the  memory  of 
the  harmonious  new  structures,  which  the  intel- 
ligence of  "Romanism"  is  building  on  every 
hand;  or  to  him  who  comes  back  with  the  vision 
of  Mass  or  vespers  in  St.  Mark's  at  Venice,  or  in 
the  cathedrals  of  Seville  or  Sienna,  still  lingering 
243 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

with  him  —  to  such  an  one  the  Roman  CathoUc 
churches  of  the  United  States  are  —  let  it  be  said 
plainly  —  a  fear  and  a  scandal.  He  may  go  to 
the  cathedral  in  the  city  of  New  York,  and  find 
much  that  he  loved  across  the  water:  for  St.  Pat- 
rick's, consecrated  by  real  artistic  reverence  and 
thoroughness,  is  no  unworthy  pile;  or  he  may  go 
with  great  edification  to  St.  Paul's,  massive,  rest- 
ful, solemn,  a  memorial  before  God  of  human 
honour  and  sense  of  beauty;  he  may  find  two  or 
three  other  churches  where  he  can  worship  without 
utterly  shutting  himself  up,  for  duty's  sake,  from 
outward  impressions;  but  what  will  he  suflfer  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten  ?  A  novel  shock  to  his  devo- 
tion and  veneration;  an  offence  to  every  aesthetic 
sense  which  God  has  given  him.  The  same  is 
doubly  true  of  Boston.  The  Cathedral  has  out- 
ward dignity  and  reserve;  and  but  for  its  gas-pipe 
columns  and  very  ugly  windows  and  sad-coloured 
walls  would  be  passably  majestic  and  beautiful. 
Despite  its  unfortunate  site,  despite  the  fact 
that,  like  every  other  Roman  cathedral  in 
244 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

our  Republic,  it  has  no  proper  choir  and  chancel, 
it  is  yet  a  noble  and  worthy  building.  But  apart 
from  this,  is  there  one  Roman  Catholic  church  in 
all  Boston  which  glorifies  God  by  its  material 
worth,  and  spreads  the  faith  by  its  charm?  I  do 
not  know  of  one;  and  I  do  know  of  many  poor, 
cultured  souls  who,  attending  High  Mass  here 
and  there,  hungry  for  the  food  of  spiritual 
beauty,  have  sorrowfully  gone  away,  repelled, 
not  more  by  the  operatic  music,  the  loud  unlovely 
vestments,  than  by  the  stucco  and  imitations, 
the  tawdry  ornament,  and  the  harsh,  violent 
decoration. 

And  as  for  the  country  churches,  where  can  one 
be  found  which  can  compare  with  those  the  Epis- 
copal Church  is  building  right  and  left? 

Now  this  condition  of  things  can  only  be  looked 
on  as  bad  in  the  extreme,  and  for  these  reasons: 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  disobedient,  irreverent, 
sometimes  almost  blasphemous;  in  the  second 
place,  it  is  libellous  and  misleading;  and  in  the 
third  place,  it  defeats  in  large  measure  the  ends  the 
245 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Church  prays  for  and  labours  to  attain.     Let  me 
say  a  word  on  each  of  these  three  points. 

By  divine  command,  as  well  as  by  all  the  higher 
instincts  of  our  nature,  we  are  told  to  render  unto 
God  of  our  best,  to  give  Him  of  our  treasure  and 
our  riches;  nor  will  He  accept  that  on  which  we 
lay  little  value,  or  which  is  inferior  and  second- 
rate.  The  best  that  we  have  is  poor  and  insuffi- 
cient enough;  how  then  can  we  come  before  Him 
bringing  in  our  hands  those  things  which  we  our- 
selves know  to  be  merely  expedient,  and  represent- 
ing in  no  wise  what  we  can  afiford  and  obtain? 
^Moreover,  does  not  our  sense  of  fitness,  our  rational 
instinct,  teach  us  that  in  the  tabernacle  where 
God  Himself  is  content  to  enter  and  dwell,  where 
daily  in  the  presence  of  saints  and  angels  are 
celebrated  the  divine  mysteries  of  the  Catholic 
faith,  where  is  repeated  for  the  saving  of  man  the 
awful  Sacrifice  of  Calvary  —  does  not  our  instinct 
teach  us  that  hither  should  be  brought  only  the 
choicest  that  we  possess,  the  highest  art,  the  most 
precious  ornaments,  the  most  costly  treasure  that 
246 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

we  can  afford,  all  the  wealth  of  noble  art  and 
craftsmanship,  the  fruit  of  the  ripe  genius  of  the 
truest  architects  and  sculptors  and  painters  alive? 
Such  was  always  the  belief  and  the  action  of 
the  historic  Church  of  God  from  the  days  of  the 
building  of  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  and  the 
Temple,  down  through  the  first  years  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  splendours  of  Byzantium  and  the 
solemn  glories  of  Mediaevalism,  unto  the  majesty 
and  luxury  of  the  Renaissance.  It  was  not  until 
the  time  of  the  so-called  Reformation  that  the  old 
habits  of  the  people,  which  had  their  natural 
expression  through  loving  sacrifice  and  precious 
gifts,  changed,  in  a  portion  of  the  world,  to  a 
barbarous  iconoclasm  and  a  penurious  selfishness. 
As  the  house  of  God  became  the  house  of  man, 
there  were  born  the  bare  and  ugly  meeting-houses, 
the  parsimony  and  grudging  doles  of  money, 
wrung  from  greedy  purses,  where  once  had  been 
eager  generosity  and  noble  emulation  in  doing 
honour  to  the  incarnate  Lord.  That  in  Protestant 
countries  Christian  art  should  have  ceased,  and 
247 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

anything  in  the  way  of  architecture  be  found 
good  enough  for  God,  is  perhaps  natural;  but  is 
it  logical  that  the  CathoHc  Church  should  adopt 
the  evil  practices  of  the  heresy  and  schism  she 
condemns?  Since  the  reaction  to  a  higher  and 
more  spiritual  religion,  which  began  in  England 
with  the  Oxford  movement,  there  has  been  a  great 
advance;  and  now  the  majority  of  the  Established 
churches,  empty  since  the  pestilence  of  Puritanism 
swept  through  them,  are  daily  growing  rich  and 
sweet  with  new  treasures  of  act,  heralding  the 
return  of  a  great  people  to  the  ancient  Faith.  The 
Catholicism  of  the  present  century  has  wrought 
exquisitely  in  England;  Protestantism  has  fallen 
far  behind  it.  It  is  only  in  America  that  we  find 
the  descendants  of  the  iconoclastic  schismatics 
labouring  together  with  the  American  representa- 
tives of  the  Anglican  Church  to  make  their  houses 
of  worship  or  religious  instruction  more  acceptable 
in  the  sight  of  God,  more  attractive  to  men, 
while  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  hangs  in 
the  rear,  content  with  shameful  structures  that 
248 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

would    be    looked   on    as    a    disgrace    by    other 
Christians. 

Is  not  this  a  scandal  and  a  reproach? 

In  the  second  place,  the  present  condition  of 
Roman  Catholic  architecture  is  belying  and  mis- 
leading. Art  is  always  the  gauge  of  civilization, 
the  flowering  of  an  age,  the  culmination  of  its 
highest  power.  "Show  me  the  art  of  a  time,  and 
I  will  tell  you  its  .life."  The  gorgeous,  semi- 
oriental  spirit  of  Byzantium,  with  all  its  splendid 
mysticism,  its  splendid  cruelty,  is  just  as  clearly 
seen  in  Aya  Sophia  as  are  the  noble  emotionalism 
and  lofty  justics  of  Venice  found  in  St.  Mark's, 
the  chivalry  and  faith  of  the  thirteenth  century  in 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris,  the  dead  formalism  of  the 
post-Reformation  in  the  London  St.  Paul's.  "By 
their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them."  We  can  read 
the  large,  empty  mockery  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  in  the  churches  of  Wren  and 
Inigo  Jones:  what  should  we  judge  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  America  to  be,  were  we  to 
judge  her  by  her  churches  of  the  last  ten  years? 
249 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

A  conviction  formed  in  this  way  would  be  very 
far,  would  it  not,  from  the  truth?  —  for  we  all 
agree  that  the  Church  is  neither  pretentious  nor 
tawdry,  shallow  nor  false,  cheap  nor  second-rate. 
Yet  judged  as  history  justifies  us  in  judging,  these 
would  be  her  characteristics;  and  these  are  the 
very  characteristics  attributed  to  her  by  those 
who,  through  their  own  ignorance,  know  her  only 
from  without.  Therefore  it  is  that  her  archi- 
tecture is  false  and  misleading,  in  no  way  repre- 
sentative of  her;  unworthy  of  her  glorious  annals, 
her  fame  as  the  mother  and  guardian  of  the  arts, 
or  of  her  possible  destiny  as  the  director  and 
restorer  of  civilization. 

How  these  conditions  came  about  would  be 
hard  to  say,  neither  is  it  under  consideration  here; 
the  fact  remains  that  the  architecture  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  slanders  her  in  every  detail,  and 
that  she  owes  it  to  her  own  past  —  nay,  more,  to 
her  own  future,  to  correct  so  grievous  a  misrepre- 
sentation. 

In  the  third  place,  contemporary  Catholic  archi- 
250 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

tecture,  through  its  visible  contradictions  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  Church,  defeats  the  very 
end  of  missionary  labours. 

Art  is  the  most  powerful  agency  for  the  influence 
of  emotions  in  the  world;  it  is  indeed,  in  its  highest 
manifestation,  the  sensible  expression  of  religion 
itself.  It  has  always  been  one  of  the  most  mobile 
and  potent  factors  in  the  advancement  of  religion; 
and  the  failure  of  Protestantism,  as  a  vital  system, 
has  been  due,  not  alone  to  the  crudeness  and 
bitterness  of  its  peculiar  theology,  but,  as  well,  to 
its  short-sighted  antagonism  to  beauty  in  all  its 
forms.  Again,  the  great  success  of  the  "High- 
Church"  movement  in  England  and  America  is 
due  as  well  to  its  restoration  of  sumptuous  ritual 
and  inspiring  architecture,  as  to  its  return  to  the 
truths  of  religion,  without  which  the  world  has 
found  it  could  not  live. 

For  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  carelessly  to 

reject  the  gigantic  and  eager  aid  of  art  and  beauty 

is  therefore  not  alone  irreverent  and  misleading; 

it  is  deliberately  injurious  as  well.    Thousands  of 

251 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

men  and  women,  awaking  from  the  illusions 
of  their  brief  fancy  for  the  self-sufficiency  of  agnos- 
ticism, are  standing  in  hesitation,  and  looking 
with  wistful  eyes  toward  the  old  Faith,  but 
repelled,  at  the  first  step  of  advance,  by  the  sur- 
roundings which  their  culture  tells  them  are  illiter- 
ate, assuming  often  that  behind  the  disenchanting 
exterior  is  only  an  outworn  or  retrograde  system. 
Can  we  blame  them  ? 

Is  it  not  strange  indeed  to  see  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  dehberately  rejecting  the  means 
the  Established  Chiu"ch  in  England,  the  Pres- 
byterians in  Scotland,  and  the  Episcopalians  in 
America  are  finding  so  potent,  to  their  great  and 
perpetual  profit,  blindly  continuing  to  build 
churches  which  outwardly  repel  the  enthusiasm 
of  would-be  converts?  Not  every  brain  can  beat 
out  its  path  to  truth  by  right  reason,  apart  from 
associations  with  its  accidents.  For  we  are  all 
fallible;  we  infer  the  unseen  from  what  we  see. 

I  have  cited  England  as  an  example  to  be  fol- 
lowed. She  has  many  advantages  over  our  own 
252 


ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

country.  First  of  all,  she  has  magnificent  models 
before  her;  she  has  Westminster  and  Wells, 
Gloucester  and  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  Tintern  and 
Fountains;  the  eye  which  looks  on  these,  the  heart 
which  loves  them,  is  already  trained.  Again, 
English  Roman  Catholics  have  been,  and  are  still 
claimed  to  be,  the  flower  of  the  nation;  belonging 
chiefly  to  the  aristocratic  classes,  they  have  always 
had  influence,  culture,  and  wealth,  in  striking 
disproportion  to  their  hmited  number.  They  are 
an  illustrious  and  successful  household,  whose 
methods,  perfected  by  long  thought  and  in  peace, 
are  superior  at  every  point  to  those  here,  inter- 
rupted perforce  by  the  crying  problems  of  ignorance 
and  poverty,  and  hampered  by  the  difficulty  of 
welding  together  the  heterogeneous  immigrated 
flock  of  the  present  century.  Why  should  not 
American  Catholicism  be  willing  at  last  to  admit 
all  this,  and  following  the  classic  axiom,  think  it 
expedient  to  learn  something  from  an  enemy? 
For  the  English  are  infinitely  to  the  fore  in  all 
matters  of  church  reform,  thanks  in  a  great  meas- 
253 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

ure  to  the  initiative  of  Cardinal  Manning;  their 
prayer-books,  their  singing,  their  popular  evening 
devotions,  above  all  their  buildings,  are  beautiful 
and  right.  The  charm  and  distinction  of  their 
modern  churches  are  not  to  be  realized  by  those 
who  have  not  examined  them.  They  are  quiet  in 
tone;  the  confessionals  are  usually  retired  in  a 
niche  or  behind  a  screen;  wood  is  wood,  bronze  is 
bronze;  every  stall,  carving,  mosaic,  lectern  is 
what  it  professes  to  be  —  no  more,  no  less;  there 
are  no  paper  roses  in  the  vases,  no  gas-jets  in  the 
candelabra.  The  surpliced  choir  of  men  and 
boys  occupies  its  legitimate  place.  The  pews, 
or  better  yet  the  chairs,  are  thoroughly  comfortable; 
there  is  almost  always  a  little  shelf  for  the  con- 
venience of  each  person,  and  a  small  separate 
kneeling-cushion,  to  be  affixed  afterwards  to  a 
peg  belonging  to  the  seat  in  front. 

Now,  can  any  Roman  Catholic  familiar  with  his 

own  ill-constructed  churches,  especially  with  those 

in  seaside  and  rural  districts,  conceive  of  himself 

as  dwelling  in  such  luxury  of  a  Sunday  morning? 

254 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

as  utterly  free  to  give  his  whole  mind,  as  he  fain 
would  do,  to  the  Divine  Presence  before  him? 
Would  not  his  children  maintain  unconsciously 
more  attachment  to  a  church  where  they  do  not 
grow  sore  at  Sunday  school  from  the  hard  benches, 
where  they  cannot  kneel  on  the  sharp  angles  of 
the  wood  without  at  the  same  time  sitting  down, 
and  praying  against  nature  in  a  perpetual  fidget? 
Is  it  not  difficult  to  impress  upon  a  none-too- 
Spartan  generation  that  "this  is  none  other  than 
the  house  of  God  and  the  Gate  of  Heaven,"  while 
it  feels  so  much  like  another  locality  altogether? 
In  all  seriousness,  the  time  has  come  to  consider 
these  things.  Perhaps  one  vital  cause  of  the  dis- 
comfort of  such  churches  is  the  utter  absence  of  lay 
co-operation  in  their  erection.  It  is  to  be  observed 
that  the  sanctuary  chairs  are  generally  soft  and 
ample  enough!  But  in  England,  again,  the  building 
of  the  church  is  the  concern  of  an  architect  of 
genius,  chosen  by  the  close  and  friendly  conference 
of  priest  and  people;  or  better  yet,  it  is  the  con- 
cern of  some  one  liberal  and  enlightened  founder. 
255 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

It  is  undeniable  that  piety  is  not  the  robust 
thing  it  was  of  old.  It  endures  less;  it  has  to  be 
coaxed  upon  the  way  of  life.  The  most  seemly 
and  decorous  circumstances  are  needed  to-day  to 
support  our  public  worship.  Effeminate  furnish- 
ings are  not  asked  for;  only  ordinary  ease,  and 
freedom  from  distraction  and  sour  moods;  whereby 
much  benefit  unto  eternity  would  accrue  to  Chris- 
tian souls,  most  of  all  to  the  casual  soul  who 
hovers  upon  the  threshold  and  has  not  the  cor- 
poral courage  to  come  in.  Inside,  indeed,  is 
salvation.  Inside  also  is  an  apotheosis  of  the 
ugly  and  annoying.  That  it  should  be  so  is,  with 
no  exaggeration,  the  greatest  pity,  the  greatest 
blunder  in  the  world. 

It  is  hard  to  urge  any  possible  excuse  for  this 
mournful  condition  of  things.  It  is  not  because 
competent  architects  and  artisans  are  wanting, 
for  that  they  exist  is  proved  by  the  occasional 
good  structures  which  appear  in  the  midst  of  the 
horrors  that  stand  for  Christian  architecture  in 
America.  It  is  not  because  no  capacity  exists  in 
256 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC   CHURCH 

the  Roman  Catholic  Church  for  appreciating  able 
work.  It  is  not  because  she  is  unable  to  purchase 
the  best,  for  she  has  always  money  to  give  to 
God's  service.  Besides,  it  costs  not  one  cent  more 
to  build  a  fine  church  than  a  poor  one.  The  best 
churches,  architecturally,  in  America  are  precisely 
those  that  cost  small  sums  of  money;  often  it  is 
the  very  lavishing  of  money  on  unnecessary  and 
plebeian  embellishment  which  spoils  so  many  of 
them. 

Any  architect  will  testify  that  skill,  not  dollars, 
is  the  means  whereby  good  work  takes  the  place 
of  bad;  and  for  this  reason  this  last  excuse  is  pre- 
cisely the  least  defensible  which  may  be  offered. 
Again,  the  fact  that  few  of  our  noted  architects  are 
Roman  Catholics  does  not  debar  the  Church  from 
availing  herself  of  their  talents;  for  it  is  surely 
better  to  glorify  the  Almighty  by  the  hands  of 
unbelievers  than  to  wrong  Him  by  the  incom- 
petence of  those  in  the  fold.  In  fact  no  apology 
offers  itself  which  can  be  listened  to  for  a  moment, 
and  the  abuse  certainly  seems  one  which  on 
257 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

every   account    demands    prompt    and    vigorous 
battle. 

Surely  it  is  most  desirable  that  the  powerful 
and  noble  alliance  between  the  Church  and 
art  should  be  restored,  after  its  lapse  of  two  or 
three  centuries.  All  over  the  Union,  art,  mate- 
rialized and  hardened  by  Puritanism  and  conse- 
quent agnosticism,  cries  for  the  aid  of  faith  and 
idealism.  By  sagacious  influence,  judicious  guid- 
ance, it  may  be  for  the  Catholic  Church  to  create 
in  America  not  only  a  new  religious  art,  but  by 
social  and  economic  reform  to  make  art  once  more 
universal  and  omnipresent,  the  property  of  all 
men.  But  even  if  this  may  not  happen,  yet  the 
Church  can,  nevertheless,  hasten  the  final  achieve- 
ment of  this  great  end  by  rejecting,  once  for  all, 
the  present  pitiable  and  mendacious  makeshifts 
wherewith  she  now  hides  her  light,  and  by  accept- 
ing from  none  but  the  greatest  architects,  sculp- 
tors, and  painters  nothing  but  their  best  work,  and 
by  making  her  churches,  however  simple,  worthy 
tabernacles  of  the  living  God,  visible  manifesta- 
258 


ROMAN   CATHOLIC    CHURCH 

tions  of  the  solemnity  and  primacy  of  the  power 
which  has  created  them,  irresistible  agents,  through 
the  ministry  of  their  thoughtful  and  impassioned 
beauty,  of  the  reunion  of  Christendom  and  the 
restoration  of  the  Catholic  faith. 


259 


ONE  OF  THE  LOST  ARTS 


ONE   OF  THE   LOST  ARTS 

/^NCE  upon  a  time  I  made  a  phrase  which 
^-^  pleased  me  then  and  pleases  me  now:  "  Art  is 
the  symbolical  expression  of  otherwise  inexpress- 
ible ideas."  Like  the  categorical  statements  of 
all  great  truths,  it  is,  of  course,  hopelessly  partial, 
and  equally  incomplete,  for  that  mystic,  inex- 
plicable, yet  perfectly  definite  and  determinable 
thing  we  call  beauty  is  the  only  mode  of  this 
mysterious  voicing,  while  this  same  beauty  is  in 
itself  a  sufficient  objective  for  art  in  many  of  its 
phases,  without  postulating  the  higher  and  ulti- 
mate object  which  is  the  communication  of  ideas 
incommunicable,  as  between  mind  and  mind,  and 
to  be  evoked  and  transferred  only  by  the  sym- 
bolical language  of  beauty,  which  is  art. 

Now,  as  I  say,  this  dual  aspect  of  art  has  always 
263 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

been  accepted  by  all  races  of  men  from  the  begin- 
ning until  comparatively  recent  times,  and  though 
of  late  curious  heresies  have  arisen  which  have 
endeavoured  —  and  with  some  measure  of  tem- 
porary success  —  to  substitute  weird  theories  as 
to  the  desirability  of  "painting  what  one  sees," 
and  to  applying  the  same  extraordinary  principle 
to  the  other  forms  of  art  (whereby  the  major  part 
of  them  have  ceased  to  be  art  at  all),  still,  the 
methods  and  the  implements  have  remained  the 
same,  and  the  same  also,  with  one  single  exception, 
the  accepted  number  of  the  artistic  modes.  Archi- 
tecture, painting,  sculpture,  music,  poetry,  the 
drama,  —  these  are  still  called  "Fine  Arts," 
though  it  is  difficult  to-day  to  find  in  several  of 
these  categories  any  except  an  academic  justifica- 
tion for  so  arbitrary  a  nomenclature.  Still,  the 
work  is  done,  and  the  terminology  endures,  except 
in  one  instance,  where  a  very  great  art  indeed, 
whether  judged  from  the  standpoint  of  pure  beauty 
or  from  that  of  emotional  incentive  and  expression, 
has  been  wholly  dropped  from  the  category  of  the 
264 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST   ARTS 

arts.  I  refer  to  the  Fine  Art  of  religious  cere- 
monial. 

Of  course  this  remains,  at  least  its  forms  and 
its  symbols,  and  even  its  details  of  visible  expres- 
sion; like  architecture,  painting,  sculpture,  and 
the  drama,  the  forms  endure  while  the  essence  is 
lost,  but  unlike  them  it  has  ceased  to  hold  rank 
as  an  art  of  equal  grace  and  potency,  and  even 
now,  in  spite  of  the  reforms  effected  during  the 
last  half  century,  I  fancy  that  some  may  experience 
a  feeling  of  novelty  and  even  of  surprise  on  being 
told  that  religious  ceremonial  is  indeed  a  Fine 
Art,  and  by  no  means  the  least  of  these. 

It  is  simple  enough,  —  the  showing  how  it 
happened  that  this  became  one  of  the  "lost  arts." 
The  inevitable  outcome  of  the  Renaissance  was 
the  destruction  of  that  sense  of  beauty  and  of 
reverence  therefor  which,  until  then,  had  been  the 
inalienable  heritage  of  every  man.  ,  The  return  to 
barbarism  which  marked  the  time,  together  with  the 
substitution  of  precedent  for  proof  as  a  test  for 
beauty,  formed  a  combination  that  was  irresistible. 
265 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Of  the  arts  architecture  succumbed  first,  in  Italy, 
painting  last,  and  when  in  the  end  the  glory  that 
had  been  Bellini  and  Leonardo,  Botticelli  and 
Tintoretto,  died  in  the  silly  sentimentalities  and 
the  leaden  inutilities  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
beauty,  the  last  treasure  of  Pandora's  box,  took 
flight  back  to  heaven  from  whence  it  came,  and  if 
hope  remained  we  were  unaware  of  the  fact  for  a 
considerable  space  of  time. 
Then  the  Renaissance  took  on  a  different  aspect 

r 

in  the  North,  and  became  the  Reformation,  min- 
gled of  the  original  pagan  impulse  and  the  moral 
revolt  from  its  unendurable  manifestationTj  Art, 
dishonoured  in  the  South,  acquired  in  Germany, 
and  later  in  France  and  England,  the  connotation 
of  corruption,  and  was  banned  by  name;  so,  with 
the  passive  horrors  of  what  passed  for  art  in 
Rome,  and  the  active  repudiation  of  its  very  name 
in  the  North,  beauty  was  banished  from  Europe, 
and  the  places  that  once  knew  it  were  to  know  it 
no  more,  until  after  a  space  it  sprang  up  again  in 
Germany  in  the  guise  of  music,  and,  in  the  very 
266 


ONE    OF   THE   LOST   ARTS 

latest  days  of  all,  began  to  reappear  sporadically, 
here  and  there,  and  in  many  forms,  in  France 
and  Scandinavia  and  England. 

And  always  the  names  of  the  great  arts  remained, 
except  in  the  case  of  ceremonial.  In  the  Roman 
Church  the  thing  itself  had  endured,  but  as  hardly 
more  than  a  series  of  obligatory  forms.  The 
passionate  impulse  of  a  God-given  art  was  gone, 
and  in  its  place  was  come  a  dutiful  obedience  to 
law,  and  a  cheerful  acceptance  of  whatever  the 
world  in  its  folly  called  beautiful.  Worse  by  far 
was  the  northern  event,  for  here,  incapable  of 
discriminating  between  essential  evils  and  the 
innocent  habiliments  with  which  they  were  clothed, 
the  reformers  rejected  good  dogma  with  bad 
morals,  just  order  with  its  corrupt  application, 
and  the  eternal  necessity  of  religious  ceremonial 
with  the  rank  criminality  of  the  Renaissance. 

And  the  hunger  for  art  denied  was  always  there, 
always  in  the  hearts  of  men;  a  hunger  inextin- 
guishable, for  art  is  like  food  and  children,  an 
essential  of  life.  Cast  out  of  its  highest  heritage 
267 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

and  domain,  the  worship  of  God,  it  established 
itself  lower  down  in  secular  and  pseudo-religious 
affairs.  As  the  Church  grew  cold  and  silent  and 
empty,  unlighted  of  candle  and  no  longer  sweet 
with  the  savour  of  swung  incense;  as  the  slow 
beat  of  antiphonal  chanting  died  away,  as  the 
copes  and  chasubles  and  ceremonial  vestments, 
wrought  of  stiff  brocades  and  heavy  with  jewels 
and  needlework,  gave  place  to  grim  black  and 
white,  and  as  the  vast  body  of  consecrated  sym- 
bolism and  rhythmic  movement  and  ordered  act 
vanished  before  the  varying  anarchy  of  "primi- 
tive simpHcity"  —  as  these  things  came  to  their 
perfect  fruition  in  the  great  Protestant  Order  of 
Worship,  wherefrom  all  beauty  had  utterly  van- 
ished, the  rejected  Art  of  Ceremonial  found  its 
compensation  elsewhere.  At  Court  ceremonialism 
achieved  a  scrupulous  formality  that  would  put  to 
shame  a  Pontifical  High  Mass  in  St.  John  Lateran. 
Free  Masonry,  with  its  gorgeous  ritual  and  in- 
tricate symbolism,  welcomed  the  thousands  of 
emancipated  intellects  that,  once  outside  the 
268 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST    ARTS 

Lodge,  would  mob  a  priest  who  put  on  a  vestment 
or  allowed  two  small  candles  on  the  altar  of  his 
church.  New  secret  orders  sprung  up,  each  vying 
with  the  other  in  ceremonial  elaboration  to  answer 
the  clamorous  demand  of  the  logical  male  for  a 
chance  to  participate  in  a  ritual  he  scoffed  at  in 
the  Sanctuary.  The  high  ritual  of  visiting  cards, 
the  solemn  ceremonial  of  the  white  cravat,  the 
silk  hat,  and  the  creased  trousers,  the  stately  litur- 
gies of  good  society,  all  answered  the  cravings  of 
men  for  the  union  of  form  and  law;  even  the 
reformed  and  rationalized  religionists  themselves 
worked  out  a  kind  of  sad  parody  of  the  old  dead 
art.  I  myself  remember,  years  ago,  in  an  Unita- 
rian meeting-house  far  away  in  the  country,  how, 
when  the  last  hymn  was  sung  by  the  choir  from 
the  rostrum  at  the  back  of  the  room,  it  was  the 
sacred  custom  that  all  the  congregation  should 
rise,  and,  turning  their  backs  on  the  minister, 
"face  the  music,"  and  so  stand  until  the  end  of 
the  hymn. 
Pure  ritualism,  of  course,  and  pure  ritualism 
269 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  beautiful  system,  once  in  vogue,  whereby 
gentlemen,  on  going  into  church,  sat,  leaned  for- 
ward, placed  their  hats  over  their  faces,  and, 
presumably,  devoted  themselves  to  prayer.  Of  a 
piece,  all  of  this,  with  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  and 
holy  water,  and  genuflection,  no  different  except 
that  the  latter  are  significant  in  their  symbolism, 
and  fired  with  beauty  and  the  enormous  potency 
of  ancient  and  changeless  things,  while  the  former 
are  empty  and  ugly  and  forlorn;  the  plated  ice- 
pitcher  beside  the  jewelled  chalice. 

Men  have  not  outlived  ceremonial,  religious  or 
secular:  they  hunger  for  it,  fight  for  it,  die  for  it, 
but  some  maggot  in  their  brains  has  told  them  to 
deny  it  where  it  is  imperative,  demand  it  where  it 
is  unessential,  while  the  strange  old  Puritan  loath- 
ing for  beautiful  things  bewrays  them  still,  and 
leads  them  to  prefer  a  frock  coat  and  white  tie  to 
an  embroidered  cope  and  jewelled  mitre,  as  it 
leads  their  women-kind  to  blanch  at  the  thought 
of  going  to  a  Court  at  Buckingham  Palace  without 
three  white  ostrich  plumes  in  their  hair,  while 
270 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST    ARTS 

they  regard  with  perfect  equanimity  the  awesome 
spectacle  of  a  fancifully  shaven  clergyman  cele- 
brating the  Holy  Communion  in  a  "nightgown 
surplice"  and  black  stole,  worn  easily  over  a  black 
"sack  suit." 

But  why,  you  may  ask,  are  cope  and  mitre 
preferable  to  the  justly  celebrated  "magpie''  of 
the  Anglican  Bishop,  or  alb,  amice,  and  chasuble 
to  a  modest  surplice,  or  indeed  a  seemly  frock 
coat?  Why  a  tonsure  rather  than  side  whiskers? 
Why  Catholic  liturgies  and  ceremonial  to  those  of 
the  Plymouth  Brethren,  the  Seventh  Day  Baptist 
or  the  Christian  Scientist?  The  question  I  have 
placed  on  your  lips  is  opportune,  for  the  answer  is 
ready:  because  the  old  things  are  beautiful  and 
significant,  the  new  ugly  and  insignificant.  Let 
us  take  the  question  of  beauty  and  ugliness  first. 

Now,  as  I  have  tried  to  show  elsewhere,  *  beauty, 
as  such,  is  a  perfectly  definite  thing,  but  the  cri- 
teria whereby  it  is  judged  are  not  those  of  what  is 

*  Impressions  of  Japanese  Architecture  and  the  Allied 
Arts.     Chapter  VIII. 

271 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

known  as  "reason,"  but  those  other  which  are 
exactly  as  authoritative,  and  derive,  not  from  the 
workings  of  the  physical  mind,  but  from  the  pro- 
cesses of  the  spiritual  intelligence.  Whether  this, 
which  is  the  supreme  intelligence  of  man,  is  the 
result  of  inherited  experience,  or  of  that  "elder 
memory"  which  endures  through  myriads  of 
incarnations,  being  so  true  Karma,  the  indestruct- 
ible through  unending  mutations,  the  soul  of  man, 
is  a  question  for  East  and  West  to  determine 
between  themselves.  The  decision  does  not 
touch  the  issue:  the  fact  remains  that  beauty  is  a 
thing  which  passes  earthly  experience,  is  not  to 
be  tested  by  the  standards  the  individual  estab- 
lishes in  his  progress  between  the  cradle  and  the 
grave,  is  indeed  greater  even  than  race  or  blood 
or  nationality,  being  in  itself  universal,  and  form- 
ing almost  the  only  definite  and  concrete  and 
visible  link  that  binds  men  to  the  infinite.  It 
may  almost  be  called  a  manifestation  of  the  Ab- 
solute. 

Now  this  fact  was  perfectly  well  known  in  his- 
272 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST    ARTS 

tory  down  to  very  recent  times.  A  beautiful  thing 
was  beautiful,  whether  it  came  out  of  paganism  or 
Buddhism  or  Mohammedanism  or  Christianity. 
The  change  came  with  the  pagan  Renaissance, 
when  a  new  standard  was  set  up,  that  of  artifice. 
Since  then  it  has  been  simply  a  question  of  fashion, 
of  precedent.  Of  course,  the  old  instinct  died 
hard,  and  for  years  kept  cropping  up  in  the  most 
unexpected  places,  as  for  example,  in  the  barbarous 
Hanoverian  epoch  in  England,  with  its  really 
exquisite  silver  and  cabinet  work;  in  the  astonish- 
ing Napoleonic  episode,  with  its  delicate  brass 
and  its  exquisite  carvings;  in  the  reign  of  the 
Stuarts  with  their  fine  clothes  and  their  courtly 
manners.  But  always  this  weird  recrudescence 
was  as  sporadic  as  were  the  isolated  painters  that 
blazed  their  pathway  of  fire,  like  unpredicted 
comets,  across  the  night  of  eclipse.  They  came 
unheralded,  they  vanished  unheeded,  and  the 
sparks  of  their  trail  kindled  no  world  conflagra- 
tion behind  them. 

And  the  new  standard  continued  unchallenged, 
273 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

until  now,  when  the  thought  of  beauty  as  an  abso- 
lute thing  is  unfamiliar,  unwelcome,  and  flatly 
denied.  Hence,  the  Shaker  dance  (to  confine 
ourselves  only  to  the  fine-art  of  ceremonial),  the 
trombones  and  calashes  of  the  Salvation  Army, 
the  negro  camp-meeting,  the  "  responsive  readings  " 
of  the  Protestant  denominations,  the  "magpie" 
of  the  Episcopalian  Bishop,  the  Munich  glass, 
and  Paris  brass,  and  operatic  music  and  aniline 
paper  flowers  of  the  Roman  Church.  —  These 
things  are  not  beautiful,  they  are  hideous,  but  one 
can  no  more  prove  this  than  he  can  demonstrate 
to  the  anxious  inquirer  why  Bellini  is  better  than 
Bodenhausen,  Brahms  than  Cherubini,  Browning 
than  Sir  Alfred  Austin,  William  of  Wykeham  than 
Sir  Christopher  Wren.  How  demonstrate  in 
words  the  beauty  revealed  by  Tschaikovsky  or 
Dvorak?  How  accomplish  the  same  for  Rossetti 
and  Sargent  and  St.  Gaudens?  The  thing  is 
impossible:  the  beauty  is  there,  serene,  supreme, 
final;  no  casuistry  can  controvert  it,  as  no  ability 
can  establish  its  perfection  beyond  cavil:  there 
274 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST    ARTS 

are  chords  and  discords,  —  if  the  ear  perceives  no 
difference  it  is  useless  to  argue  about  it. 

Hence,  it  is  quite  unnecessary  for  me  to  prove 
that  the  ceremonial  of  Protestantism  is  ugly,  that 
of  the  Mediaeval  Church  beautiful.  The  fact  may 
be  stated,  but  the  statement  is  sufficient. 

In  the  matter  of  significance  (which  you  may 
remember  was  the  second  point  in  the  indictment 
against  the  unceremoniousness  of  modern  things), 
while  it  is  true  that  the  old  was  indeed  supremely 
significant,  being  the  absolutely  adequate  lan- 
guage for  the  expression  of  the  highest  truths,  it 
is  perhaps  hardly  fair  to  say  that  Protestant  cere- 
monial is  not  significant:  insignificant  it  surely  is, 
using  the  word  in  its  most  common  sense,  for  it 
usually  fails  to  express,  either  beautifully  or  con- 
vincingly, the  elements  of  dignity  in  the  principles 
it  strives  to  manifest.  "Experience  meetings" 
and  "revivals"  and  camp-meetings  do  not  pro- 
claim freedom  of  conscience  in  such  a  way  that  it 
would  be  noticed;  the  "exercises"  of  the  evangel- 
ical denominations  fail  in  a  way  to  express  with 
275 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

power  and  delicacy  the  doctrines  of  predestination 
and  salvation  by  faith.  The  lawn  tie,  worn  with 
a  frock  coat,  while  admittedly  a  lofty  flight  of  the 
ceremonial  imagination,  does  not  fully  express 
"the  dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  protest  of 
Protestantism";  even  the  full  beard  and  the  shaven 
upper  lip  are  less  perfectly  lucid  in  their  teaching 
than  the  tonsure.  One  may  even  venture  to  say, 
perhaps,  that  "praying  into  one's  hat"  fails  in  a 
measure  to  express  quite  clearly  the  spirit  of  the 
Reformation.  If  in  the  creation  of  a  substitute 
beauty  Protestantism  has  failed,  it  has  also  fallen 
short  of  perfect  success  in  its  endeavours  to  give 
tongue  to  its  essential  principles.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  quite  true  that  CathoHc  ceremonial 
would  be  even  more  out  of  place,  for  it  was  made 
into  a  fine  art  for  the  single  purpose  of  expressing 
the  idea  of  Sacramentalism,  and  Sacramentalism 
has  been  quite  abandoned  by  the  emancipated 
intellects  of  the  new  era,  whether  they  call  them- 
selves Protestants  or  rationalists  or  ethical  cultur- 
ists  or  atheists.  Now  quite  the  most  wonderful 
276 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST   ARTS 

thing  about  the  CathoHc  Church  is  that  it  pro- 
claimed Sacramentalism  as  its  essential  quality 
as  an  organization,  thus  discovering  what  is  really 
the  secret  of  the  Universe.  The  world  of  which 
we  have  cognition  is  purely  sacramental  in  its 
nature  and  its  manifestations,  which  is  perhaps 
why  the  Catholic  Faith  is  the  only  scientific  effort 
at  a  solution  of  the  great  problem.  Now  beauty 
is  sacramental  in  essence,  for  it  is  "an  outward 
and  visible  sign"  of  a  spiritual  truth  or  a  spiritual 
experience  that  passes  other  expression,  and  cere- 
monial, which,  as  a  fine  art,  deals  primarily  with 
beauty,  came  into  existence  to  voice  with 
perfect  potency  this  greatest  of  all  scientific  dis- 
coveries, Sacramentalism. 

Therefore,  when  those  who  deny  this  great 
truth,  hungering  after  beauty  of  form,  yet  unable 
to  accept  the  verity  behind  it,  add  to  their  some- 
what frosty  services  the  glory  of  painted  glass, 
and  vested  communion  tables,  mass  music  and 
candles  and  Gothic  architecture,  we  feel  that  while 
this  course  demonstrates  a  welcome  return  of 
277 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

aesthetic  sense,  it  is  perhaps  a  Httle  superficial, 
since  it  takes  no  count  of  the  paramount  signifi- 
cance of  ceremonial  and  of  all  other  forms  of  art, 
as  language. 

I  think  we  may  admit,  then,  that  modern  cere- 
monial is  in  no  exact  sense  a  fine  art,  since  it  is 
not  beautiful,  and  is  either  unsignificant  or  signifi- 
cant of  the  insignificant.  We  may  admit  also  that 
the  denial  of  Sacramentalism  rules  out  of  the 
argument  such  as  avow  this  denial.  The  idea 
must  demand  expression  before  we  formulate  the 
language  necessary  for  its  communication.  Of 
course  this  elimination  narrows  the  field  con- 
siderably, but  there  still  remain  the  several  branches 
of  the  Catholic  Church  which  are  soundly  Sacra- 
mental whatever  individuals  may  say,  and  which 
must  express  themselves  through  ceremonial 
whatever  individuals  may  think;  I  desire  to  urge, 
therefore,  on  the  Roman  and  Anglican  com- 
munions the  fact  that  religious  ceremonial  is  a 
fine  art,  with  all  the  words  imply,  and  on  the 
former  a  special  attention  to  the  meaning  of  the 
278 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST   ARTS 

word  "fine,"  on  the  latter  a  special  attention  to 
the  word  "art." 

In  the  first  case,  while  the  whole  body  of  cere- 
monial is  preserved  in  form,  the  realization  leaves 
something  to  be  desired.  It  is  perhaps  somewhat 
captious  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  great 
reform  of  music,  even  now  in  process,  was  not  the 
only  one  for  which  there  was  a  demand  in  the  name 
of  the  sanctity  of  art.  The  shrilling  choir  boy 
and  the  promiscuous  assemblage  in  the  west 
gallery,  who  flaunted  the  saccharine  obviousness 
of  the  popular  song  composer,  are  yielding  to  the 
choir  of  grown  men  and  the  decent  Gregorian. 
But  there  are  other  points  as  well:  slurred,  per- 
functory ceremonial  is  just  as  bad  as  a  slurred, 
perfunctory  picture:  "fiddleback"  chasubles,  ex- 
aggerated dalmatics,  imitation  lace,  clumsy  copes 
and  overgrown  mitres,  all  "made  in  Germany," 
of  cheap  and  showy  stufifs,  embroidered  in  aniline 
hues;  censers  without  incense,  cut  paper  flowers, 
squabbling  altar  boys,  —  these  are  no  fit  substi- 
tute for  the  matchless  art  of  the  Middle  Ages.  In 
279 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  city  in  which  I  am  writing,  I  must  go  for  the 
pure  fine  art  of  ceremonial,  not  to  the  Roman 
cathedral,  nor  yet  to  the  church  of  the  Jesuits, 
but  to  a  forlorn  old  box  of  a  meeting-house  now 
in  the  hands  of  a  monastic  order  of  the  Anglican 
Church.  Therefore  in  this  case  I  emphasize  the 
word  "y^;ie,"  for  the  tendency  in  that  part  of  the 
Church  which  has  not  yielded  in  the  least  to 
the  Reformation  is  to  lay  stress  on  the  word  "art," 
and  to  consider  it  even  there  in  its  secondary 
sense  of  "artifice."  The  prescribed  things  are 
done  after  a  fashion,  but  without  much  apprecia- 
tion of  their  significance  and  their  power.  When 
one  adds  to  this  the  co-ordinate  fact  that  the 
churches  themselves  are  even  worse,  from  the  stand- 
point of  art,  one  comes  to  see  why,  surrounded  by 
myriads  of  souls  sick  of  rationalism  and  "liberty 
of  conscience,"  the  accessions  from  Protestantism 
are  few  and  far  between. 

And  how  sad  it  all  is!     There  is  no  other  work 
of  art  more  entirely  perfect  than  a  solemn  High 
Mass,  forging  its  splendid  way  through  the  mys- 
280 


ONE   OF   THE   LOST   ARTS 

terious  light  and  the  veiHng  incense  of  an  old 
Gothic  cathedral,  to  the  sonorous  beating  of  deep 
Gregorians.  It  takes  rank  with,  and  even  above, 
the  other  triumphs  of  art;  Parsifal,  a  Bellini  altar- 
piece,  Saul,  the  King  Arthur  of  Innsbruck.  The 
Church  created  it  as  she  created  all  Christian  art, 
and  it  was  at  the  same  time  the  flowering  of  faith, 
the  seed  of  myriad  conversions.  And  now  it  has 
become  a  dead  thing,  and  sometimes  ugly,  for  life 
has  gone  from  it;  it  bears  the  same  relation  to  its 
great  mediaeval  type  that  a  Roman  temple  bears 
to  the  Erechtheum.  Patience,  however;  the  first 
step  has  been  taken  and  church  music  is  being 
redeemed,  perhaps  by  and  by  we  shall  find  the 
leaven  working  in  the  stagnant  ceremonial  itself. 

"A  fine  ay/;"  here  we  turn  to  another  branch  of 
the  Church,  and  lay  stress  on  the  second  half  of 
the  compound  word.  Here  the  case  is  different,  the 
thing  itself  was  gone  for  generations,  and  now, 
though  the  other  arts  are  welcomed  home  with 
outstretched  hands,  the  greatest  of  all  is  given 
the  cold  shoulder,  except  here  and  there,  where  the 
281 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

warmth  of  the  welcome  is  such  as  to  prejudice 
those  who  are  ignorant  of  the  real  nature  of  the 
returning  prodigal.  In  a  way  this  is  quite  logical, 
for  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  through  every 
art,  when  called  into  the  service  of  the  Church, 
shines  a  dominant  thought,  which  alone  justifies 
the  form.  "Ritualism,"  as  it  is  called,  is  quite 
inexcusable  if  it  is  founded  on  a  mere  love  of  pretty 
things:  if  it  is  used  as  a  language  the  idea  must  lie 
behind,  and  the  idea  that  is  voiced  by  Catholic 
ceremonial  is  certainly  Catholic  and  sacramental. 
If  there  are  any  that  deny  that  Sacramentalism  is 
the  heart's  blood  of  the  Church,  then  they  are 
Protestant  and  not  Catholic,  and  the  established 
type  of  Christian  ceremonial  is  not  for  them.  I 
believe  there  are  such,  and  if  so,  they  are  quite 
right  in  being  anti-ritualists.  It  would  seem, 
however,  judging  from  history,  the  creeds,  the 
canons  and  the  formularies,  that  the  Episcopal 
Church  is  sacramental  and  Catholic,  therefore  we 
may  ehminate  the  anti-ceremonial  prejudice  for 
the  time  being,  so  far  as  it  is  based  on  a  fear  of 
282 


ONE    OF    THE    LOST    ARTS 

what  it  teaches.  If  the  Episcopal  Church  were 
Protestant,  it  would  be  another  matter;  being 
Catholic,  she  is  of  course  debarred  from  opposition 
to  ceremonial  for  what  it  expresses.  Yet  most 
violent  opposition  does  exist,  largely  it  seems 
because  of  the  fact  that  in  the  re-acceptance  of  art 
as  a  necessary  part  of  life,  it  has  been  forgotten 
that  ceremonial  is  in  itself  a  fine  art.  It  is  called 
all  sorts  of  strange  things,  "Romanizing,"  "mil- 
linery," "superstition,"  "formalism."  Of  late 
we  have  been  told  by  an  eminent  educator  that 
it  is  a  kind  of  bondage,  a  slavery  of  the  soul,  surely 
the  most  curious  accusation  of  them  all.  The 
real  truth  appears  to  be  that  these  varied  epithets 
are  piled  up  to  form  the  last  barricade  behind 
which  the  defenders  of  materialism  and  —  shall 
we  say — barbarism,  strive  desperately  to  withstand 
the  forces  that  fight  for  the  restoration  of  art  to 
its  patrimony.  There  is  no  slightest  difference 
between  this  fight  and  the  others  that  preceded  it, 
and  were  successively  lost;  the  resistance  to  good 
architecture,  to  music,  to  painting,  to  sculpture. 
283 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

It  has  taken  almost  a  century  of  warfare  to  restore 
these  things,  and  in  the  earUer  campaigns  the 
fathers  and  grandfathers  of  the  present  "em- 
battled farmers"  contended  just  as  strongly  against 
the  "steeple  house"  and  the  "kist  o'  whusles,"  as 
do  their  doughty  descendants  against  religious 
ceremonial.  And  in  the  end  the  real  reason  is  the 
same: — *the  old,  old,  Reformation  old,  hatred  of 
art  in  the  service  of  religion.  I  It  is  a  commonplace 
of  science  that  animosities  last  generations  after 
the  moving  cause  has  been  utterly  forgotten.  I 
remember  a  case  in  point,  that  of  my  grandfather. 
Beginning  in  1634,  his  paternal  ancestors  had 
waged  a  war  to  the  death  against  the  great  pine 
forests  of  New  England:  every  foot  of  ground  for 
tillage  was  won  at  the  price  of  the  life  of  a  great 
tree,  and  very  soon  there  was  definite  enmity 
between  man  and  the  forests  that  surged  against 
his  hard- won  acres.  Well,  two  centuries  passed, 
the  forests  had  dwindled  to  isolated  groves,  the 
fields  were  threatened  no  more  by  pine  or  oak  or 
hemlock,  but  every  year,  to  the  day  of  his  death, 
284 


ONE   OF   THE   LOST   ARTS 

something  stirred  in  the  blood  of  the  scion  of  the 
forest-fighters,  and  at  fourscore  and  over  he 
would  seize  an  axe  and  go  forth,  covertly  but  with 
grim  determination,  and  when  he  returned  the 
light  of  war  was  gone  from  his  face,  instinct  had 
achieved,  and  some  cherished  shade  tree  lay  long 
and  still  in  the  dust. 

So  persists  the  old  hatred  of  the  black  days  of 
Edward  VI,  and  Elizabeth  and  Cromwell,  the 
fierce  animosity  towards  beauty  in  the  service  of 
God,  and,  whatever  the  pretext,  below  is  the 
driving  motive  that  actuated  those  who  were  set 
upon  the  destruction  of  religion  as  it  was,  and 
who  realized,  with  a  justice  absent  elsewhere  from 
their  dealings,  that  beauty,  tradition,  ceremony, 
and  form  are  the  four  columns  that  uphold  the 
material  fabric  of  the  temple:  shatter  them,  and 
the  whole  wonderful  creation  crumbles  and  sinks 
in  dust  and  ruin,  as  was  the  case  with  the  great 
abbeys  of  England,  when,  after  the  Henrician  Reign 
of  Terror,  the  destroyers  undermined  the  four  great 
piers  of  the  crossing,  and  so  brought  all  to  an  end. 
285 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Here  again,  however,  we  may  have  courage,  for 
as  in  the  Roman  Church  the  reform  of  music 
foreshadows  the  reform  of  ceremonial,  so  in  the 
AngHcan  Church  the  restoration  of  architecture, 
painting,  sculpture,  and  the  decorative  arts  gives 
reliable  promise  of  the  same  restoration  of  cere- 
monial. And  how  imperative  is  the  need  may 
easily  be  seen.  Of  course,  much  of  that  which  is 
essential  has  been  preserved,  and  a  certain  dignity 
and  self-respect  have  been  retained  when  they  have 
vanished  from  amongst  those  who  have  preserved 
more  of  the  art  itself:  for  this  we  are  grateful,  for 
it  might  have  befallen  otherwise,  but  how  far  we 
are  yet  from  a  restoration  of  religious  art  in  its 
completeness  may  be  seen  by  a  visit  to  any  Eng- 
lish cathedral  of  a  Sunday  or  to  the  average  parish 
church  in  America.  I  cannot  at  the  moment 
recall  any  religious  service  which  makes  so  many 
pretensions  and  is  yet  so  abhorrently  void  of 
beauty  as  the  late  celebration  of  the  Holy  Com- 
munion in  the  typical  English  cathedral.  Apart 
from  the  singing,  which  is  marvellous  in  its  tech- 
286 


ONE    OF   THE   LOST   ARTS 

nical  perfection,  there  is  nothing  which  can  be 
considered  acceptable  as  an  approximation  to 
true  religious  ceremonial,  and  the  whole  is  typified 
by  the  exit  of  the  blazing  and  mace-laden  beadles, 
heading  a  dignified  procession  of  canons,  clergy, 
choir,  and  congregation,  after  the  close  of  Solemn 
High  Matins,  and  the  "ante-communion  service," 
leaving  three  patient  old  clergymen  to  say,  not  to 
sing,  the  remainder  of  the  communion  service 
(the  great  organ  so  voiceful  during  matins  now 
being  closed  and  locked),  for  the  benefit  of  from 
three  to  twelve  stragglers,  mostly  strangers. 

And  when  one  looks  around  at  those  wonders 
of  perfect  art,  the  cathedrals  and  churches  of 
England,  and  sees  how  they  have  been  preserved, 
embellished,  enriched  in  their  latter  years  with 
new  altars  and  windows  and  embroideries  and 
goldsmith's  work:  when  one  considers  that  almost 
equal  wonder  of  perfect  art,  the  Prayer  Book,  and 
realizes  how  the  whole  might  be  made  to  live  and 
breathe  by  the  addition  of  a  ceremonial  in  keeping 
with  fabric  and  with  book,  and  how,  also,  such  a 
287 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

change  would  mean  filling  the  naves  of  the  ca- 
thedrals again,  where  now  the  choir  stalls  alone 
are  adequate  for  the  accommodation  of  worship- 
pers even  at  a  "sung  matins,"  and  filling  the 
parish  churches  too  without  the  aid  of  the  brilliant 
and  magnetic  preacher,  —  when  this  idea  develops 
one  comes  to  see  that  it  is  not  at  all  a  question  of 
taste  in  millinery  or  predilection  in  art,  but  a 
really  burning  issue;  not  one  of  mere  "ritualism," 
but  one  of  reason  and  logic  and  common  sense. 

For  I  return  to  my  first  postulate:  religious  cere- 
monial is  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  fine  arts,  and 
when  we  mimimize  it,  or  effect  modern  substi- 
tutes, we  are,  to  say  the  least,  warring  against  the 
cause  of  good  art.  And  in  the  latter  case  we  are 
rituahsts  still.  The  august  university  professor 
who  jeers  at  ceremonial  in  church,  drapes  himself 
in  a  voluminous  gown  of  heavy  silk,  bedecks  his 
back  with  the  rainbow  hues  of  academic  hoods, 
and  crowns  his  head  with  remarkable  gear  in 
which  a  great  tassel  of  vivid  silk  is  conspicuous. 
He  is  quite  right,  this  is  art, — of  sorts,  —  and  to 
288 


ONE    OF   THE    LOST   ARTS 

be  highly  commended,  but  it  is  flagrant  ritualism, 
and  if  the  head  of  an  university  were  to  do  this, 
how,  it  may  be  asked  in  innocence,  should  he 
condemn  a  Bishop,  who  wears,  instead  of  cap  and 
gown,  a  cope  and  mitre?  No,  ritualism  is  a 
primal  necessity  of  the  human  soul,  but  it  must 
grow,  it  cannot  be  made  to  order;  when  the  latter 
course  is  followed  the  result  may  be  humorous,  it 
is  certainly  not  edifying.  For  instance,  to  me, 
the  Procession  of  the  Wardens  with  the  "collec- 
tion" is  a  thought  less  beautiful  and  impressive 
than  the  Gospel  procession:  the  incense  in  front, 
then  the  processional  crucifix  between  two  candle- 
bearers,  then  the  sub-deacon,  bearing  the  Gospels, 
finally  the  Deacon,  and  all  clothed  in  vestments 
ancient  in  honour,  reminiscent  of  centuries  of 
splendid  history,  beautiful  in  form,  in  colour,  in 
materials.  Nor,  I  confess,  do  I  find  the  "evening 
communion"  of  the  protesting  Protestant  "ad- 
ministered" by  some  worthy  gentleman  whose 
face,  it  may  be,  is  diversified  by  tonsorial  inepti- 
tudes, who  is  robed  in  the  ordinary  choir  garb, 
289 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

with  a  wide  black  stole,  and  who  fixes  himself 
evangelically  at  the  north  end  of  the  "Holy  Table," 
the  which  is  void  of  cross,  light  or  flower,  and  is 
backed  by  the  dual  Tables  of  the  Law  —  and 
flanked  perhaps  by  the  Forbidden  Degrees  of 
Matrimony  —  the  whole  proceeding  in  an  easy 
conversational  tone,  —  this,  if  I  may  venture  to 
say  so,  seems  to  fall  short  in  a  way,  both  in  beauty 
and  in  significance,  of  the  early  Mass,  chanted  in 
the  dim  light  of  dawn  by  a  proper  priest  in  a 
"Gothic"  chasuble  of  splendid  brocade  wrought 
with  holy  figures  and  symbols  in  exquisite  needle- 
work, while  the  tall  candles  flicker  before  the 
reredos  set  with  multitudinous  saints,  and  beautiful 
with  the  labours  of  many  artificers.  Or,  for 
another  antithesis,  consider  the  "Protestant  Epis- 
copal" Bishop  as  he  manifests  himself  in  a  "re- 
liable" Diocese.  He  is  clothed  in  that  amazing 
portent,  the  traditional  "magpie,"  with  its  ludi- 
crous balloon -sleeves  of  lawn,  inherited  from  the 
days  of  the  bag  wig  and  "sound  churchmanship," 
and  he  enters  the  church  of  his  visitation  in  a 
2go 


ONE   OF   THE   LOST   ARTS 

casual  and  easy  manner,  pacing,  mayhap,  behind 
a  "mixed  choir,"  whereof  the  feminine  members 
are  vested  in  the  costume  of  an  undergraduate  of 
a  male  university.  On  the  other  hand,  your 
Bishop  who  knows  beauty  and  the  significance  of 
it,  and  grasps  the  full  moment  of  tradition,  memory, 
and  association;  —  such  an  one  enters  in  solemn 
procession,  enveloped  in  a  splendid  cope  (the 
most  beautiful  and  dignified  ceremonial  vesture 
ever  devised)  on  his  head  the  mitre  of  spiritual 
authority,  in  his  hand  the  great  carved  crozier  of 
his  pastoral  office,  before  him  the  processional 
Crucifix  with  its  flanking  candles,  and  the  sweet 
incense  that  is  almost  the  oldest  spiritual  symbol 
in  the  world. 

And  as  for  the  last  great  test  of  all,  the  Solemn 
High  Mass  of  Catholic  tradition,  who  would 
presume  to  put  in  comparison  with  it,  "Morning 
Prayer,  Litany,  and  Sermon,"  or  even,  for  a 
fairer  test,  such  a  service  of  Holy  Communion 
as  wins  from  judical  Diocesans  the  high  praise  of 
perfect  "soundness."  Surely  this  is  the  most 
291 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

solemn  single  thing  in  all  the  world,  demanding 
every  adjunct  of  perfect  beauty  that  can  be  brought 
to  its  environment,  and  in  the  consummate  cere- 
monies of  crescent  Mediajvalism  we  find  just  this, 
and  we  do  not  find  it  in  the  modern  substitute. 
The  established  ceremonies  of  the  High  Mass  take 
their  place  amongst  the  few  supreme  triumphs 
of  art  in  all  time:  in  a  way  the  great  artistic  com- 
position takes  precedence  of  all  in  point  of  sheer 
beauty  and  poignant  significance.  There  is  no 
single  building,  no  picture,  no  statue,  no  poem 
that  stands  on  the  same  level;  even  Parsifal  is  a 
weak  imitation  and  substitute.  In  the  ceremonial 
of  the  Mass,  art  comes  full  tide. 

Yet  this  is  denied  by  sincere  and  painstaking 
prelates,  rejected  by  prayerful  and  scrupulous 
clergy;  reviled  by  Doctors  of  Law  and  by  Grand 
Masters,  Royal  Arch-Potentates  and  Eminent  Sir 
Knights;  by  military  gentlemen  of  some  splendour 
of  raiment  and  of  notable  punctilio,  and  by  the 
less  logical  sex,  whose  rigidly  prescribed  vestments 
match  only  with  the  minute  and  elaborate  ritual 
292 


ONE    OF    THE    LOST   ARTS 

of  their  daily  life.  Why?  Ostensibly,  in  the 
case  of  the  non-Roman  moiety  of  the  Church,  and 
in  that  of  the  still  operative  Protestants,  because 
these  things,  —  pause,  dear  reader,  for  a  moment, 
that  the  full  flavour  of  the  explanation  may  reveal 
itself  to  you,  —  because  these  things  "  lead  to 
Rome"!  Well,  in  the  face  of  this,  there  is  nothing 
to  be  said.  Of  course,  the  lack  of  them  "leads  to 
Rome,"  for  if  this  much  maligned  geographical 
expression  persists  in  answering  an  indestructible 
hunger  of  the  human  soul,  and  no  other  eccle- 
siastical entity,  geographical  or  dogmatic,  will  do 
so,  then  perforce  "to  Rome"  we  must  go,  not 
alone  because  we  are  hungry  for  visible  beauty 
and  must  have  it,  but  because  we  are  starving  for 
the  spiritual  beauty  we  know  lies  behind  the 
outer  show,  and  this  we  will  have  at  any  cost. 

This  is,  as  I  say,  the  ostensible  reason,  but 
however  honestly  it  is  alleged  —  and  strange 
things  are  honestly  held  nowadays  -f-  the  real 
reason  is  the  inherited  hatred  of  beauty  as  a  min- 
ister of  God;  the  persistent  fury  of  the  Puritan 
293 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

forest-fighter,  recrudescent  in  the  shame-faced 
but  helpless  heir  of  animosities  in  which  he  had  no 
part.  "The  fathers  ate  sour  fruit,  and  the  chil- 
dren's teeth  are  set  on  edge,"  therefore  they  gnash 
them  at  poor  pathetic  Beauty  when  she  comes  to 
do  God  service,  even  as  they  gnashed  them  once 
at  her  ministrations  in  secular  things.  The  fathers 
prohibited  bear-baiting,  "not  because  it  gave 
pain  to  the  bear,  but  because  it  gave  pleasure  to 
the  spectators,"  and  the  sons  rise  up  against 
beauty  less  because  it  is  in  itself  a  part  of  the  ser- 
vice of  God  enjoined  on  us,  than  because  it  gives 
spiritual  joy  to  travailing  mankind,  leading  them 
out  of  the  paths  of  materialism  into  the  sweet 
pastures  of  spiritual  enlightenment. 


294 


THE  CASE  AGAINST  THE  ECOLE 
DES  BEAUX  ARTS 


THE   CASE   AGAINST  THE    ECOLE    DES 
BEAUX   ARTS 

^  I^HE  title  which  I  have  selected  for  the  very 
short  paper  I  am  going  to  beg  you  to  listen 
to  with  such  Christian  charity  as  you  possess, 
is  hardly  descriptive.  It  is  a  little  in  the  line  of  a 
"scare-head,"  and  I  want  to  modify  it.  I  do  not 
mean  savagely  to  attack  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts, 
and  by  implication  all  other  architectural  schools 
where  the  Academic  system  of  instruction  is  in 
vogue.  If  I  wanted  to  I  should  not  have  the  right, 
for  I  have  never  had  any  practical  experience  in 
any  school  of  that  kind.  I  should  be  adopting  the 
malodorous  tactics  of  a  certain  notorious  personage 
in  this  city,  who  proceeded  to  damn  the  exquisite 
statue  of  a  Bacchante  now  flitting  elusively  through 
the  courts  of  the  Library,  before  he  had  seen  it. 
What  I  do  want  to  attempt,  however,  is  an 
297 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

inquiry  into  the  methods  and  results  of  this  sys- 
tem of  education,  with  a  view  to  finding  out  if  it 
is  not  defective  in  certain  directions. 

Ever  since  I  came  to  look  upon  church  building 
as  one  of  the  most  promising  fields  of  architecture, 
and  as  one  of  the  most  dignified  and  satisfying  as 
well,  I  have  been  thinking  more  or  less  about  the 
present  system  of  architectural  instruction  which 
by  implication  denies  that  architecture  existed 
between  the  fall  of  Rome  and  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, and  also  ignores  the  fact  that  churches  are 
ever  built  nowadays,  or  that  they  are  a  legitimate 
subject  for  an  architect's  consideration.  The 
more  I  thought  about  this  curious  phenomenon 
the  more  remarkable  it  appeared,  but  I  set  it  down 
to  the  rationalism  that  until  a  few  years  ago  per- 
vaded every  department  of  life.  Of  course  it  was 
impossible  for  atheism  to  acknowledge  any  beauty 
in  the  work  which  owed  its  genius  and  its  very 
existence  to  an  "exploded  superstition,"  while 
it  was  equally  impossible  that  the  buildings  which 
were  grotesque  anachronisms,  the  outward  ex- 
298 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

pression  of  a  fast  perishing  folly,  should  be  looked 
on  as  matters  of  the  least  importance.  Under  the 
circumstances,  ancient  and  neo-pagan  were  the 
only  modes  of  civilization  that  offered  anything 
of  value  as  models  for  contemporary  architecture. 
I  still  think  this  motive  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the 
thing  when  the  present  method  of  architectural 
education  was  evolved,  but  during  the  last  year  or 
two  various  events  have  occurred  which  have  led 
me  to  think  that  other  criticisms  might  be  brought 
against  the  accepted  system  besides  this  that  it 
ignored  a  very  important  branch  of  the  art,  and 
did  nothing  to  assist  students  to  obtain  some 
knowledge  that  would  be  of  use  to  them  in  this 
field.  Among  other  things  I  became  convinced 
that  much  time  was  wasted  in  acquiring  useless 
methods  and  information,  that  false  canons  of 
taste  were  often  laid  down,  that  enormous  labour 
was  lavished  in  cramming  the  minds  of  students 
with  the  most  minute  details  of  construction, 
strength  of  materials,  etc.,  in  order  to  fit  them  for 
practical  work,  while  almost  nothing  was  done  to 
299 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

help  them  grasp  only  problems  that  in  all 
probability  would  come  before  them  for  the  first 
ten  years  of  their  practice. 

I  mean  to  speak  of  these  things  more  explicitly 
by  and  by,  but  first  I  want  to  tell  you  just  what 
the  events  were  which  brought  me  to  my  present 
condition  of  partial  antagonism  to  this  system  of 
classical  education. 

Well,  first  of  all:  sometime  ago  I  knew  a  young 
draughtsman,  who  was  enthusiastic  and  eager  to 
acquire  all  the  useful  information  he  could  find. 
He  joined  a  class  in  planing,  directed  by  a  very 
brilliant  representative  of  that  system  which 
prides  itself  enormously  on  its  prowess  in  this 
particular  direction.  There  was  trouble  from  the 
start.  This  boy  was  practical  to  a  degree,  and 
loaded  with  common  sense.  He  soon  found  out 
that  the  questions  of  convenience  in  arrangement 
of  rooms,  economy  of  space,  adaptation  to  function, 
harmony  with  environment,  stylistic  significance, 
were  secondary  considerations.  There  was  one 
great  thing  to  be  obtained,  and  that  was  a 
300 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

decorative  plan.  The  lights  and  darks  must  be 
well  proportioned.  Formality  and  perfect  balance 
were  indispensable,  and  a  finely  drawn  piece  of 
mosaic  flooring  made  amends  for  a  deplorable 
lack  of  light.  In  fact,  he  was  really  engaged  in 
decorative  design,  not  in  architectural  planning. 

Diplomatic  relations  finally  ceased  in  this  wise. 
He  grew  weary  of  designing  impossible  city  halls 
and  inadmissible  Italian  villas,  and  handed  in  — 
horrible  to  relate  —  a  scheme  for  a  large  village 
church,  English  Perpendicular  in  style,  and 
carefully  designed  with  reference  to  its  function, 
its  connotation,  and  its  significance.  Of  course, 
he  did  very  wrong  to  do  this,  —  he  should  have 
known  that  a  country  church  is  not  to  be  spoken 
of  in  academic  society.  The  plans  went  in, 
however,  and  there  was  war.  When  the  instructor 
got  his  breath,  he  confronted  the  awful  situation 
bravely  —  for  he  was  a  conscientious  man.  I  saw 
the  result  afterwards,  when  the  smoke  had  cleared 
a  little.  What  had  been  a  good  plan,  well  adapted 
to  its  function,  and  laid  out  with  due  regard  to 
301 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

cost  and  surroundings,  irregular,  of  course,  and 
capable  of  very  picturesque  though  quiet  treat- 
ment, had  become  a  nice  study  in  black  lines  and 
spots,  and  white  areas  beautifully  proportioned 
to  them.  It  was  admirably  done,  and  would 
have  made  a  charming  figure  in  a  formal  wall 
paper,  but  it  would  hardly  have  commended  itself 
to  a  building  committee.  So  far  as  the  exterior 
was  concerned,  the  revolution  was  complete. 
Every  vestige  of  English  spirit  was  gone, 
and  Montmartian  Romanesque  had  taken  its 
place. 

A  little  later,  a  friend  in  whom  I  was  very  much 
interested,  and  who  was  just  about  to  graduate 
from  the  architectural  department  of  a  prominent 
school,  asked  me  if  I  did  not  think  it  would  be  a 
good  idea  for  him  to  submit  as  his  thesis  a  design 
for  a  Gothic  church.  I  remembered  the  expe- 
rience of  my  friend,  the  draughtsman,  and  tried 
to  dissuade  him  from  his  insane  idea.  He  per- 
sisted and  fought  nobly.  Day  after  day,  with 
tears  in  his  eyes,  and  profanity  on  his  lips,  he  told 
302 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

me  how  his  cherished  plan  was  being  maltreated, 
until  it  was  fast  becoming  the  kind  of  thing  one 
finds  in  trade  books  on  church  building.  At  last 
he  gave  up  the  unequal  fight,  for  he  had  been 
kindly  but  firmly  advised  that  he  was  running  an 
awful  risk  in  sending  in  such  a  thing  as  a  thesis 
drawing  of  a  Gothic  church.  He  began  again, 
and  achieved  a  proud  success  with  an  Italian 
villa,  in  which  the  toilet-room  and  breakfast- 
room  were  beautiful  oval  apartments  of  equal 
size,  balancing  nicely,  while  the  library  occupied 
one  projecting  wing,  the  kitchen  the  other,  the 
external  treatment  being  identical. 

Finally,  one  of  our  boys  wanted  to  take  a  course 
in  an  architectural  school,  and  asked  my  advice 
as  to  where  he  should  go.  I  did  my  best  to  study 
up  these  schools,  and  in  the  process  found  out 
things  I  had  never  known  before.  In  one  school 
the  academic  rendering  was  something  exquisite, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  transparent  shadows  and 
the  lovely  smalt  trees  was  only  equalled  by  the 
fabulous  size  of  the  sheets  of  paper  on  which  a 
3°3 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

little  square  of  plan  was  magnificently  surrounded 
by  the  most  wonderful  gardens.  I  reflected, 
however,  that  it  took  a  month  of  a  boy's  life  to 
create  one  of  these  charming  things,  and  that 
after  he  left  the  school  no  conceivable  circum- 
stances could  arise  which  would  lead  him  to  in- 
dulge in  this  form  of  decorative  art,  and  so 
modified  my  admiration. 

In  another  school  I  was  assured  that  the  system 
of  instruction  was  modelled  with  absolute  fidelity 
on  that  of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,  but  I  reflected 
that  in  America  a  young  architect's  duties  are 
chiefly  the  designing  of  country  houses  and 
churches,  and  that  the  results  achieved  in  these 
lines  by  the  output  of  the  Ecole  —  so  far  as  France 
is  concerned  —  are  not  brilliantly  successful. 

The  result  of  my  experiences  and  investigations 
was  that  I  became  convinced  that  the  accepted 
system  of  education,  as  we  see  it  in  the  £lcole,  and 
in  practically  all  but  one  or  two  of  the  schools  in 
America,  did  more  harm  than  good,  and  I  want 
to  justify  this  position  if  I  can. 
304 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

First  of  all,  however,  I  must  declare  my  intense 
admiration  for  certain  principles  held  in  this 
system,  and  my  gratitude  for  the  influence  exerted. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  plead  for  these  things,  however, 
for  everyone  admits  them.  One  is  the  steady 
curbing  of  a  student's  tendencies  towards  fan- 
tastic originality,  silly  picturesqueness,  crazy 
irregularity.  I  doubt  if  this  work  could  be  done 
better  than  it  is,  and  it  is  imperative.  It  is  about 
the  only  thing  that  can  reform  architecture  in 
America,  and  redeem  it  from  its  only  too  often 
fantastic  absurdity.  There  are  many  other  fine 
points  in  the  system:  the  thorough  grounding  it 
gives  in  the  classical  orders,  the  training  it  affords 
in  proportion  and  composition,  the  solid  kernel 
of  good  in  its  system  of  planning.  But  if  none  of 
these  existed,  the  first  raison  d'etre,  the  civiliza- 
tion of  barbaric  impulses,  would  be  cause  for 
praise  and  admiration. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  faults  are,  I  think,  quite 
as  clear  and  deserving  of  sincere  condemnation. 

Many  of  these  faults,  while  not  very  grave  in 
305 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

themselves,  have  a  mischievous  effect,  for  the 
reason  that  in  too  many  cases  young  men  are 
subjected  to  them  at  just  the  wrong  time.  If  a 
man  could  have  three  or  four  years'  experience  in 
an  architect's  office,  then  travel  for  a  year  or  two 
on  the  Continent  and  in  England,  he  would  be 
proof  against  bad  influence:  his  taste  would  be 
formed,  practical  ideas  and  the  nature  of  every- 
day requirements  would  be  instilled  into  him,  and 
he  would  then  be  in  a  position  to  reject  the  bad 
and  accept  the  good.  And  he  would  do  this. 
Very  few  men,  after  a  little  solid  experience  and  a 
fair  acquaintance  with  the  architecture  of  Europe, 
could  fail  to  see  through  some  of  the  methods  and 
principles  with  which  they  would  come  in  contact 
in  the  Ecole.  This  course  is  seldom  pursued, 
however,  and  a  raw,  unformed  youth  goes  through 
an  American  architectural  school,  and  then  passes 
directly  to  the  Ecole,  and  the  result  is  that  in 
many  cases  his  taste  is  vitiated,  and  he  is  in  no 
position  to  choose  from  the  great  good  that  is 
offered  him  together  with  much  of  what  I  think 
306 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

very  bad,  and  which  if  he  would  succeed  he  must 
diligently  forget. 

I  have  had  occasion  to  advise  many  boys  as  to 
how  they  should  educate  themselves  for  the  prac- 
tice of  the  architectural  profession,  and  in  every 
case  I  have  urged  them  to  get  a  little  practical 
experience  first,  then  see  all  they  can  of  the  art  of 
the  past,  and  then  go  to  some  academic  school. 

Admitting,  then,  that  the  students  themselves 
are  largely  to  blame  for  the  harm  done  them, 
since  they  start  at  the  wrong  end,  let  us  see  just 
what  the  harm  is,  —  at  least,  let  me  suggest  what 
it  seems  to  me  to  be,  for  I  can  only  express  my 
own  feelings  in  the  matter,  I  have  no  right  to 
claim  to  represent  anyone  else. 

In  the  first  place,  the  education  in  design  is  not 
practical,  it  does  almost  nothing  to  fit  a  man  for 
actual  practice.  In  the  American  schools  a 
student  is  crammed  with  stores  of  information 
that  belong  by  rights  to  civil  engineers,  sanitary 
engineers,  specialists  and  experts.  Judging  from 
the  list  of  studies  in  any  four-year  course,  one 
307 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

would  conclude  that  the  object  was  to  turn  out 
men  who  could  start  in  practice  the  day  after  they 
took  their  degree,  armed  at  every  point,  and 
absolutely  independent  of  experts  and  engineers 
for  all  time.  Look  at  the  artistic  side,  and  you 
find  the  exact  reverse.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
a  man  just  through  an  architectural  course  has 
never  designed  a  country  house,  an  eight-room 
school-house,  a  village  church,  an  apartment 
house,  or  any  other  of  the  very  things  which  alone 
he  can  get  a  chance  at  for  the  first  ten  years  of 
his  professional  life.  His  custom  houses,  post- 
offices,  city  halls,  public  baths,  have  been  designed 
for  ten-acre  lots,  and  with  a  ward  politician's  disre- 
gard of  expense.  He  has  been  taught  to  space 
his  voids  and  solids  with  exquisite  delicacy,  but  in 
almost  no  case  can  he  yield  to  this  instinct  in  the 
future,  for  the  building  committee  will  not  allow 
it.  If,  by  good  luck,  he  gets  a  chance  at  some 
big  public  building,  he  lays  out  the  plan  on  a  sys- 
tem of  units,  and  when  it  is  too  late  he  finds  that 
hot  air  ducts  and  exhaust  flues  have  played  tag 
308 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX    ARTS 

with  the  same.  He  has  a  twelve-story  oflfice- 
building  sprung  on  him,  and  looks  in  vain  for 
scholastic  precedent.  Finally,  in  despair,  he 
takes  a  lot  of  school  theses  and  pastes  them  to- 
gether, one  above  the  other,  and  trusts  to  the  luck 
of  the  Profession  to  carry  him  through. 

Submit  this  statement  to  an  advocate  of  the 
schools,  and  he  will  wave  it  away.  "We  teach 
the  great,  fundamental  principles  of  the  art,  we 
cannot  concern  ourselves  with  the  details."  But 
this  is  just  what  the  poor  architect  has  to  do,  and, 
until  he  has  made  his  reputation  designing  houses 
and  churches,  and  his  fortune  building  steel-framed 
slices  of  office  buildings,  he  must  keep  his  mouth 
shut  as  to  the  great  principles  of  the  art. 

Of  course  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  little  short  of 
a  crime  for  any  alleged  system  of  architectural 
instruction  to  ignore  the  great  centuries  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  to  deny  that  there  ever  was  such  a 
thing  as  Gothic  architecture,  and  to  forget  that 
churches  are  still  to  be  built.  I  am  an  avowed 
fanatic  on  these  points,  and  so  I  dare  not  say  very 
309 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

much  about  them,  but  it  is  my  solemn  conviction 
that  if  we  ever  succeed  in  civilizing  ourselves,  we 
shall  one  day  admit  that  Gothic  architecture  is 
just  as  perfect  in  style,  just  as  solidly  based  on 
knowable  laws,  just  as  representative  of  high 
civilization,  as  the  architecture  of  corrupt  and 
tottering  Rome  and  of  the  immoral  Renaissance, 
while  in  impulse,  in  spiritual  power,  in  beauty  of 
line,  and  mass,  and  light  and  shade,  it  is  incom- 
parably more  worthy  of  study  and  of  admiration. 

Nor  is  the  argument  that  it  is  unfitted  to  modern 
uses  valid  for  a  moment.  It  does  not  serve  in  the 
matter  of  office  buildings  and  synagogues  and 
railway  stations  and  city  halls,  of  course.  It  is 
out  of  harmony  with  modern  civilization,  it  is  an 
anachronism:  that  also  is  sure.  But  it  is  in  har- 
mony with  the  nature  of  that  still  vital  institu- 
tion, —  the  Christian  Church,  which,  thank  God, 
still  is  a  blazing  anachronism. 

Yet  the  great  period  of  architecture,  when  it 
was  essentially  Christian,  that  period  which 
expressed  itself  in  a  form  which  is  incomparable 
310 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

for  splendour  of  imagination,  loftiness  of  spirit, 
sublimity  of  inspiration,  absolute,  abstract  beauty 
of  form  and  composition  and  design,  has  no  place 
in  the  modern  system  of  academic  instruction, 
and  I  propose  to  hold  with  all  the  vigour  I  can 
command,  that  a  system  that  wilfully  shuts  its 
eyes  to  all  this  marvellous  period  of  art,  so  in- 
structive, so  civilizing,  so  full  of  inspiration,  is 
a  bad  system. 

Here  is  another  criticism  on  a  different  line.  In 
nearly  all  the  schools  which  follow  the  Ecole,  a 
vast  amount  of  time  is  given  to  the  matter  of 
academic  rendering.  I  wish  I  knew  just  what 
this  training  is  supposed  to  accomplish.  We  live 
in  a  period  when  an  architect  who  knows  how  to 
render  his  drawings  is  reduced  to  the  level  of 
those  who  do  not,  and  he  must  sacrifice  his  ability 
for  the  good  of  a  less  competent  man.  Therefore, 
a  competition  perspective  is  "rendered  in  line 
only,  without  shadows  or  accessories,  and  with 
one  figure  introduced  to  give  scale."  Under  the 
circumstances,  the  old  fetish  of  academic  render- 
s' 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

ing  would  seem  to  be  no  longer  potent,  but  it  is 
dominant  just  the  same,  and  hundreds  of  valuable 
hours  are  wasted  by  misled  students,  in  making 
wonderful  drawings  that  are  without  the  least 
practical  use  whatever.  Neither  are  they  beau- 
tiful. They  are  wonderful  as  examples  of  manual 
dexterity,  but  I  confess  I  cannot  see  that  they  are 
anything  more,  and  the  time  lavished  on  them 
might,  I  think,  be  at  least  equally  well  employed 
in  learning  that  there  are  in  existence  buildings  in 
Chartres,  and  Amiens,  and  Gloucester,  and 
Venice  which  may  possibly  be  worth  looking  at. 
I  have  already  referred  to  the  defects  in  the 
boasted  academic  system  of  planning.  Let  me 
specify  them  a  little  more  carefully.  They  appear 
to  me  to  be  very  serious.  I  have  studied  academic 
plans  a  good  deal,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
majority  of  them  show  signs  of  having  been 
studied  out  as  problems  in  decoration,  not  in 
building.  That  is,  the  student  has  had  in  mind 
the  making  of  a  decorative  design  which  should 
be  pleasing  to  the  eye,  not  necessarily  compact 
312 


EC  OLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

in  arrangement,  convenient  in  disposition  and 
indicative  of  fine  effects  in  actual  construction. 
Looked  at  as  an  ornamental  figure,  the  typical 
academic  plan  is  very  successful.  In  a  competi- 
tion it  would  receive  no  consideration.  If  used 
as  a  working  plan  the  resulting  structure  would  be 
a  failure. 

Again,  in  the  Ecole  at  least,  I  know  it  to  be  a 
fact  that  the  only  drawings  that  are  considered 
as  important  are  the  first-floor  plan  and  the  front 
elevation.  The  former  must  be  powerful  and 
imposing  —  on  paper;  the  second-floor  plan  may 
come  any  way,  and  as  for  the  section,  it  is  worked 
out  in  the  last  day,  principally  by  "niggers."  I 
believe  the  general  experience  is  that  it  never 
comes  out  right,  but  this  doesn't  matter,  for  con- 
stantly designs  are  placed  first,  the  sections  of 
which  show  that  they  could  not  be  constructed, 
while  the  second-floor  plans  show  chimneys  starting 
from  the  ceilings  of  '^salles  des  fetes, ^'  or  anywhere 
else,  and  partitions  without  any  support  whatever. 
And  here  also  i.s  a  point  to  be  severely  criticised, 
3^3 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

the  undeniable  fact  that  in  spite  of  the  apparently 
severe  first  year's  training  in  construction,  this 
item  is  not  considered  at  all  in  the  design,  and  it 
does  not  militate  in  the  least  against  the  success 
of  a  plan  that  the  partitions  and  chimneys  on  the 
second  floor  depend  for  their  support  on  the  same 
miraculous  agency  that  held  Mohammed's  coffin 
suspended  in  mid-air. 

It  is  the  same  in  the  question  of  lighting  and 
ventilation.  So  far  as  studies  are  concerned, 
students  are  taught  enough  about  these  things 
theoretically,  but  are  they  induced  to  apply  their 
knowledge  in  actual  design  ?  I  am  told  not,  and 
I  have  known  of  innumerable  cases  where  much 
praised  designs  have  had  as  features  important 
rooms  with  a  single  window  in  one  corner,  and 
school  buildings  with  no  provision  for  ventilation 
whatever.  In  the  first  case,  the  rooms  had  to  be 
where  they  could  not  be  lighted,  for  the  balance 
of  the  plan  demanded  it;  in  the  second,  heating 
and  ventilating  shafts  were  omitted  because  they 
were  ugly  and  hurt  the  unity  of  the  plan. 
314 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

It  may  be  said  that  the  idea  of  the  system  is  not 
to  teach  practical  design,  but  to  create  in  a  stu- 
dent's mind  an  ideal  to  which  he  will  afterwards 
always  endeavour  to  approximate.  This  may  be, 
but  if  an  ideal  is  utterly  impracticable  it  is  not  of 
much  use  as  an  ideal. 

Then  here  is  another  criticism,  —  the  last  I 
shall  inflict  upon  you.  I  know  for  a  fact  that  in 
certain  schools  types  of  architecture  which  are 
inherently  and  damnably  bad  are  held  up  to 
honour  over  types  which  are  eternally  good. 
Here  is  an  example  which  came  under  my  notice. 
The  project  was  a  doorway.  Among  the  designs 
was  one  rococo  to  a  degree,  the  columns  on  either 
side  being  of  drums,  alternating  square  and  round 
—  you  know  the  style.  With  it  was  handed  in  a 
drawing  equally  well  rendered,  but  in  a  pure  and 
delicate  version  of  the  early  Italian  Renaissance. 
The  first  represented  a  style  debased  and  cor- 
rupted, the  second  that  style  while  it  was  pure 
and  admirable.  The  rococo  design  was  placed 
first  in  the  award. 

315 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Now  this  is  a  small  matter,  but  it  is  significant, 
for  if  it  is  possible  for  the  academic  system  to 
become  an  agency  for  the  debasing  of  a  student's 
taste  instead  of  cultivating  it,  it  is  a  legitimate 
subject  for  savage  criticism. 

These  are  some  of  the  reasons  a  certain  class  of 
men  have  for  distrusting  the  system  at  present  in 
vogue  in  architectural  schools,  and  the  prejudice 
is  growing,  not  lessening.  Recently,  we  have 
seen  an  honest  and  a  courageous  attempt  made 
by  various  men  who  have  studied  in  the  ficole,  to 
exalt  its  name  and  influence.  But  does  this 
method  do  away  with  the  distrust  of  those  who 
cannot  accept  the  teachings  of  the  academic  sys- 
tem? On  the  contrary,  it  intensifies  them.  Un- 
less I  am  mistaken,  these  zealous  upholders  of  the 
Ecole  —  nearly  all  of  them  masterly  architects  to 
whose  work  one  must  look  up  with  honest  admira- 
tion —  inaugurated  this  movement  with  a  com- 
petition drawn  on  the  most  approved  lines  of  the 
ficole  des  Beaux  Arts.  I  read  the  programme 
with  delight.  Anglomania  was  not  in  it.  This 
316 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX    ARTS 

was  Gallomania,  raised  to  the  n"'  power.  Once 
more  our  immortal  old  friend  put  in  an  appearance, 
the  "Wealthy  Amateur,"  with  the  precious  col- 
umns and  amazing  tastes;  and  to  prolong  the  in- 
fluence of  the  academic  system,  draughtsmen 
were  urged  to  yield  to  the  blandishments  of  the 
aforesaid  sociological  fiction,  and  assist  him  to 
dispose  of  his  white-elephantine  columns  to 
academic  advantage  and  the  glory  of  the  system. 

I  am  sure  I  was  not  the  only  one  who  wondered 
where  was  the  use  of  all  this;  of  what  possible 
benefit  could  it  be  to  young  fellows  who  were 
trying  to  earn  a  living  out  of  architecture.  Where 
was  the  good  ?  I  confess  I  could  only  think  of  the 
lamented  Mr.  Pecksniff,  who  was  such  a  shining 
light  in  the  profession,  "Well,  you  might  design  a 
pump:  now  a  pump  is  very  chaste  practice." 

I  am  told  that  the  problem  this  year  is  on  the 
face  of  it  a  complete  surrender  to  Americanism 
and  modernity,  being  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
a  harmless,  necessary  tavern.  This  is  excellent. 
Visions  rise  up  at  once  of  a  host  of  drawings, 
317 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

wrought  out  in  varying  styles.  One  perhaps  with 
the  dignified  walls  and  delicate  details,  the  mag- 
nificent chimneys  and  fine  verandahs  of  colonial 
Virginia.  Or  it  may  be  one  that  brings  back 
the  memory  of  jolly  days  in  little  English  country 
towns,  with  the  amiable  bar  just  behind,  and  a 
"pint  of  bitter"  at  one's  elbow.  With  this  sub- 
ject the  chance  for  young  architects  to  do  work 
that  should  be  charming,  and  in  every  way  appro- 
priate, is  infinite.  But  will  any  design  on  English 
or  American  lines  find  favour?  Hardly.  One 
would  risk  little  in  wagering  that  the  prize  plan 
will  be  formal,  well  balanced,  decorative,  the  major 
and  minor  axes  admirably  accented,  the  foci  of 
interest  powerfully  "accused";  that  its  roof  will 
be  low  and  covered  with  red  tiles,  and  that 
it  would  bask  in  the  glare  of  a  Connecticut 
sun,  in  the  midst  of  colonnades  and  pergolas  and 
fountains,  and  statues  shown  by  little  vermillion 
cubes. 

Well,  here  is  where  I  bring  to  an  end  what  you 
will  think  a  very  unbridled  tirade,  but  I  assure 
318 


ECOLE    DES    BEAUX   ARTS 

you  I  mean  no  harm  by  it.  If  anything  can  curb 
the  ardour  of  our  untamed  American  spirit  as  it 
expresses  itself  in  architecture,  it  is  the  influence 
of  academic  training.  But  just  because  it  may 
do  this,  it  does  not  follow  that  the  system  is  im- 
peccable. For  my  own  part  I  think  it  is  peccable, 
and  I  see  no  reason  why  I  should  not  say  so.  If 
instead  of  exalting  to  the  skies  the  Ecole  and  all 
its  works,  its  advocates  would  try  to  see  whether 
or  no  the  local  and  contemporary  conditions  here 
in  America  might  not  modify  its  principles  to 
advantage,  we  might  obtain  a  system  which  would 
be  above  criticism — even  of  architects  who  never 
had  any  academic  training,  whereas  now  we 
have  one  which  knocks  the  nonsense  out  of 
students,  but  fails  to  put  much  sense  in  its  place; 
a  system  which  strives  to  destroy,  but  does  not 
succeed  in  building  up  —  in  which  respect  it 
curiously  resembles  this  dissertation. 


319 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 
IN    THE    UNITED    STATES 


\'i  'y 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION   IN  THE 
UNITED   STATES 

I  "\URING  the  last  decade, — since  the  lecture 
-^^^  that  forms  the  basis  for  the  preceding 
paper  was  written,  in  fact,  —  several  new  schools 
of  architecture  have  come  into  being,  while  in 
those  that  then  existed  there  seems  a  growing 
consciousness  of  the  fact  that  after  all  their  pe- 
culiar function  is  not  the  manufacture  of  special- 
ists out  of  the  raw  material  of  the  common  school 
and  the  night  school  and  the  Schools  of  Corre- 
spondence, not  the  training  of  consummate 
draughtsmen  or  past  masters  of  steel  construction, 
but  the  making  of  gentlemen,  broad  of  view,  well 
furnished  in  their  knowledge  of  history,  literature, 
and  comparative  civilization,  conversant  with  the 
theory  of  art  as  beauty  and  as  language,  masters 
of  the  deep  principles  of  design.  Such  cultured 
323 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

and  scholarly  men  are  then  fitted  to  go  on  and 
specialize  if  they  will  in  the  practice  of  architecture, 
or  any  of  the  arts;  but  no  actual  and  active  work 
can  possibly  give  that  which  the  schools  can  offer: 
and  recognizing  this,  there  is  a  manifest  tendency 
towards  a  broadening  and  deepening  of  scholastic 
curricula.  As  a  consequence  those  schools  which 
still  hold  to  the  old  idea  of  the  breeding  of  special- 
ists, which  ignore  the  elements  that  go  to  the 
founding  of  a  broad  base  of  culture,  learning,  and 
refinement,  harping  still  on  the  prior  rights  of 
practice  design,  rendering,  and  building  construc- 
tion, are  falling  to  the  rear,  and  must  continue 
to  do  so  until  a  more  comprehensive  grasp  of  the 
situation  is  vouchsafed  to  them. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  any  one  of  the  schools  of 
architecture  has  as  yet  achieved  the  great  "uni- 
versity" view  of  things  which  must  come  in  time. 
Columbia  is  well  on  the  road,  and  possibly  Har- 
vard also,  but  even  here  there  is  too  much  of  the 
unfortunate  "elective"  idea,  and  a  boy  may 
choose  what  he  likes,  not  what  he  should  have. 
324 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

The  old  and  sound  conception  of  an  university 
as  a  place  for  the  developing  of  gentlemen  of  a 
culture  adequate  to  fit  them  for  specialization  at  a 
later  time  in  any  given  direction  has  largely 
yielded  to  the  time-serving  spirit  that  leaps  towards 
the  goal  of  the  specialist,  striving  to  save  time  by 
turning  out  the  illiterate  expert,  the  savant  cog- 
nizant only  of  the  working  elements  of  his  trade, 
the  essentially  uncultivated  man,  since  he  knows 
only  one  thing,  be  he  veterinarian  or  bacteriologist. 
It  was  this  peculiarly  nineteenth-century  whim 
that  led  to  the  old  fashion  of  architectural  training, 
and  whether  it  vanishes  elsewhere  or  not,  it  must 
cease  in  the  school  of  architecture,  for  there  is  no 
form  of  artistic  activity  where  lack  of  the  cultiva- 
tion that  belongs  to  a  gentleman  is  more  fatal  and 
disastrous,  for  the  simple  reason  that  architecture 
has  been  found  to  be  the  one  art  in  which  the 
element  of  inborn  genius  or  divine  inspiration  is 
not  a  prerequisite.  The  soul  of  a  Wagner,  a  Brown- 
ing, a  Burne  Jones,  or  a  St.  Gaudens  is  exempt 
from  the  fostering  influence  of  scholastic  training, 
325 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

as  was  the  soul  of  a  Bach,  a  Dante,  a  Leonardo, 
and  a  Donatello;  eternity  spoke  through  them, 
not  they  themselves;  but  the  architect  is,  or  may 
be,  less  of  an  heaven-born  genius:  his  is  in  many 
ways  the  greatest  of  the  arts,  but  it  lies  nearer 
humanity,  farther  from  the  clouds:  it  is  interpre- 
tation, manifestation,  rather  than  revelation  and 
prophecy.  An  architect,  and  a  good  architect, 
can  be  made,  but  not  by  the  methods  one  employs 
to  fabricate  a  stenographer  or  a  dental  surgeon. 

There  is  every  possible  excuse  for  the  fact  that 
in  the  beginning  such  were  the  sacred  processes 
of  the  schools  of  architecture.  The  "elective" 
idea,  and  its  concomitant,  specialization,  were  in 
the  breath  of  our  nostrils,  and  apart  from  them 
was  no  consciousness  whatever.  Our  fathers  of 
England  had  no  precedents  to  offer  us,  no  example 
in  time  and  space  to  which  we  could  turn;  France 
alone  had  fashioned  a  scheme,  and  being  France 
had  fashioned  it  of  pure  logic  and  singular  un- 
wisdom. Then  and  thereafter  we  seized  them 
both,  unwisdom  and  logic,  and  wolfed  them  down. 
326 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

Out  of  it  all  came  a  definite  thing,  an  organized, 
operative  school,  and  this  was  much  —  more  than 
England  has  done  even  yet.  From  France  we 
have  gained  what  we  could  not  have  found  else- 
where: our  own  good  sense  has  held  us  from  folly, 
and  from  too  merciless  logic,  and  as  a  result 
architecture  is  taught  better  to-day  in  America 
than  elsewhere  in  the  world. 

Not  perfectly,  however;  in  some  respects  quite 
absurdly,  but  the  methods  can  be  amended,  for 
after  all  is  said,  the  foundations  are  sound  and 
broadly  built,  the  house  is  not  toppling  on  shifting 
sands. 

Now  as  from  France  came  the  good,  so  also  there- 
from came  the  evil,  and  like  a  sea-severed  colony 
we  have  sent  back,  year  by  year,  our  best  to  be 
made  better  by  the  perfecting  and  the  final  tri- 
umphant cachet  of  the  sovereign  power  of  our 
ultimate  allegiance.  Now  the  colony  has  become 
an  empire:  "Home"  is  no  longer  infaUible,  our 
destiny  looms  big  before  us,  and  Independence  is 
declared,  independence  not  alone  of  post-graduate 
327 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

scholarship,  but  of  the  ideals  that  no  longer  hold 
our  sympathy,  of  the  methods  and  the  laws  that 
we,  in  our  clearer  air,  confronting  our  own  just 
problems,  realize  are  not,  and  cannot  be,  our 
methods  and  our  laws. 

Let  us  apply  this  to  the  single  question  of  archi- 
tectural education.  With  all  the  good  we  have 
borrowed  from  France,  we  have  accepted,  in  vary- 
ing degrees,  three  manifest  and  concrete  evils: 
disregard  of  the  paramount  necessity  of  general 
cultivation  and  substitution  in  its  place  of  a  most 
inordinate  passion  for  specializing;  the  inability  to 
discriminate  between  sound  principles  and  the  bad 
taste  that  frequently  marks  their  manifestation; 
and  finally  the  ignoring  of  art  in  its  function  as 
language,  and  the  acquisition  of  a  purely  Gallic 
contempt  for  all  that  greatest  epoch  of  architecture 
which  marked  the  supreme  years  of  Christian,  as 
opposed  to  pagan,  civilization. 

In  spite  of  our  formal  and  avowed  concurrence 
in  these  errors,  we  have  most  illogically  failed 
wholly  to  carry  them  into  practice.  It  is  a  matter 
328 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

of  fact  that  those  who  have  returned  to  us  after 
assimilating  all  that  was  offered  in  Paris  have, 
so  far  as  the  major  part  is  concerned,  gone  de- 
liberately to  work  to  produce  far  better  things 
than  happened  in  the  land  of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 
Arts.  Almost  without  exception  their  work  has 
been  marked  by  an  equal  logic,  a  superior  grasp 
of  the  problem,  and  a  far  greater  feeling  for  beauty, 
for  scale,  for  composition;  and  all  expressed  with  a 
refinement  and  good  taste  that  show  themselves 
seldom  amongst  the  architects  of  France.  The 
good  has  endured,  the  bad  has  been  sloughed  off, 
and  in  actual  accomplishment  America  has  beaten 
France  on  her  own  ground.  Still  endure,  how- 
ever, the  old  superstitions  in  the  schools  them- 
selves, and  though,  little  by  little,  they  are  rising 
to  a  higher  level  and  to  a  more  comprehensive  view 
of  education  as  education,  there  is  little  evidence 
as  yet  that  the  time  is  very  near  when  the  several 
styles  will  be  fairly  and  impartially  judged  on  the 
basis  of  beauty  and  interpretation.  The  classical 
styles  remain  not  only  the  beginning  but  the  end 
329 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  art,  Christian  architecture  is  despised  and 
rejected,  and  so  long  as  this  is  true,  the  whole 
system  is  vitiated,  for  the  only  tests  of  architectural 
style  are  its  quaUties  as  beauty,  as  language,  and 
as  structural  expression,  and  the  peremptory  denial 
of  the  aesthetic  existence  of  Gothic  simply  means 
that  art  is  judged  neither  as  beauty  nor  as  lan- 
guage, but  solely  as  dogma,  as  a  series  of  forms 
arbitrarily  chosen  from  alien  times  and  an  alien 
race,  to  serve  us  to-day,  not  as  a  noble,  adequate, 
and  beautiful  language,  but  as  the  implements  of 
an  ingenius  but  insignificant  game. 

It  is  not,  then,  merely  a  cause  of  complaint  on 
the  part  of  a  few  mediaevaUsts  that  Gothic  should 
be  banished  from  the  schools,  it  is  not  that  these 
same  educational  agencies  do  nothing,  and  de- 
liberately, to  fit  their  students  for  approaching 
the  problem  of  church  building,  it  is  not  even  that 
in  a  Christian  land  Christian  art  is  ignored  and 
denied.  The  question  is  far  greater  than  this, 
touching  the  very  fundamentals  of  the  educational 
system  itself.  If  we  apply  to  Gothic  architecture 
330 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

the  tests  we  bring  to  that  of  paganism,  we  find 
that  in  every  respect  the  ordeal  is  perfectly  passed. 
/  The  beauty  of  Gothic  excels  all  others  save  only 
Greek  alone,  and  even  here  it  stands  on  the  same 
high  eminence^'  In  mass,  composition,  and  the 
interdependence  and  interrelation  of  parts,  it 
admits  no  rival  whatever.  Structurally  it  stands 
at  the  head  of  all  human  material  achievement, 
and  its  design  follows  from  this  with  a  delicacy 
and  an  exactness  that  only  the  Greek  again  can 
rival,  and  even  here  a  deep  gulf  opens  between  the 
simple  and  even  primitive  classical  scheme  and  the 
marvellous  complexity  and  supreme  development 
of  the  mediaeval  idea.  As  a  concrete  architectural 
style,  Gothic  is  at  the  same  time  the  most  highly 
developed  and  the  most  completely  beautiful  of  all 
those  that  have  appeared  in  time  and  space,  i  As 
language  it  is  of  course  beyond  cavil;  it  is  the  style 
developed  by  Christianity  to  express  Christianity, 
and  during  the  great  centuries  of  civilization  it 
was  sole  and  adequate,  yielding  only  to  the  re- 
crudescence of  paganism. 
33^ 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Now  if  this  is  all  true,  are  we  not  compelled  to 
postulate  of  scholastic  agencies  something  ap- 
proaching a  false  standard  of  judgment,  in  that 
they  accept,  as  the  only  possible  style,  the  varied 
versions  of  the  primal  pagan  norm,  not  because 
these  alone  possess  beauty,  logic,  and  expressive 
value,  but  because  some  one  they  respect  has 
stated  that  this  was  the  case.  It  is  impossible 
to  blink  the  fact  that  so  long  as  the  schools  of 
architecture  accept  the  Roman  Renaissance  as 
sound  and  good,  Christian  Gothic  as  bad  and 
false,  the  standards  of  judgment  that  control  this 
choice  are  indefensible  and  their  existence  menacing 
to  the  education  that  follows  therefrom. 

I  doubt  if  the  public  is  aware  of  the  discrimina- 
tion that  actually  exists.  Architects  know  it,  but 
in  the  glamour  of  the  ever-present  Ecole,  the  fact 
does  not  astound.  The  results  are  pubhcly 
visible  and  brought  soundly  home  when  churches 
or  colleges  or  cathedrals  are  to  be  built,  but  to 
those  interested,  the  fact  that  a  man  who  has 
designed  a  Roman  bank  or  a  Renaissance  railway 
332 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

station  or  a  Parisian  library  cannot  possibly 
design  a  country  church  that  is  cause  for  anything 
save  laughter  or  tears,  —  this  anomalous  but  not 
unusual  fact  is  set  down  to  the  inherent  and  well- 
known  ineffectiveness  of  the  architectural  pro- 
fession. The  stigma  is  undeserved:  the  man 
himself,  he  who  handles  the  familiar  pagan  forms 
with  perfect  and  justifiable  assurance,  quails 
before  the  simplest  problem  in  ecclesiastical  de- 
sign. He  is  in  the  place  of  one  who  is  master  of 
Greek  and  Latin,  and  who  is  set  down  in  the 
midst  of  Germany  without  a  word  of  the  local 
tongue  at  his  command.  It  is  indeed  just  this:  a 
different  language,  and  of  the  rudiments  of  this  liv- 
ing tongue  he  has  been  taught  nothing.  Claiming 
to  make  architectural  specialists,  the  schools  fail 
even  here,  for  their  graduates  are  fitted  to  cope 
in  no  respect  with  the  ever-present  problem  of 
church  building. 

This  is  the  sequence:  Greek  is  taught,  in  theory 
and  in  practice,  as  the  basis,  which  is  eternally 
right;  then  comes  Roman,  not,  I  fear,  as  an  example 
333 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  structural  development  coincident  with  marked 
artistic  retrogression,  but  rather  as  another  step 
towards  perfection.  Then  comes  the  amazing 
and  even  laughable  hiatus:  from  the  Fall  of  Rome 
on,  century  after  century,  down  even  to  the  out- 
break of  the  Renaissance,  a  period  of  more  than  a 
thousand  years,  everything  is  either  ignored  or 
briefly  considered  in  a  perfunctory  sort  of  way, 
and  purely  from  an  archaeological  standpoint.  A 
brief  resume  of  history  is  offered,  but,  except  in 
one  school  perhaps,  nothing  is  taught  of  the  theory 
and  principles  that  formed  the  basis  of  the  varied 
art  of  this  same  thousand  years.  In  the  same 
condemnation  fall  that  exquisite  art  of  Byzantium, 
which  was  the  result  of  an  attempt  to  develop  from 
the  actual  barbarism  of  Rome  a  style  that  should 
be  logical  in  point  of  construction,  beautiful  in  its 
manifestation:  the  strange  and  ingratiating  efforts 
of  the  Lombard  and  the  Norman  and  the  Teuton 
to  fashion  a  fair  and  lovely  architecture,  and  that 
which  followed  at  last  as  crown  and  climax  of  all, 
the  stupendous  and  triumphant  achievement  of  all 
334 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

Europe,  when  at  last,  the  shackles  of  paganism 
riven  and  cast  away.  Christian  civilization  rose 
victorious  over  the  dead  past,  and  brought  into 
being  the  noblest  epoch  and  the  loftiest  art  of 
which  human  history  writes  the  record.  The 
scholar,  the  philosopher,  the  economist,  the  his- 
torian, the  ecclesiastic,  all  know  what  this  thousand 
years  meant  to  the  world:  together  they  admit 
that  the  fundamentals  of  our  civilization  are  found 
here,  and  not,  as  some  have  superficially  held,  in 
the  sequent  Renaissance  and  Revolution.  Monas- 
ticism,  the  Crusades,  feudalism,  chivalry,  the 
mediaeval  Church,  these  are  foundation  stones, 
and  the  physical,  intellectual,  spiritual,  and  artistic 
life  that  followed  from  them  is  at  once  the  golden 
beginning  of  civilization,  the  seed  of  all  that  is 
good  in  modern  life.  But  not  of  that  which  is  ill; 
we  may  trace  the  stains  and  the  blots  and  the 
marring  elements  back  to  that  Renaissance  which 
brought  the  Great  Thousand  Years  to  an  end, 
while  for  the  Reformation  and  Revolution  we  may 
say  this:  that  the  reforms  they  encompassed  were 
335 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

reforms,  not  of  the  bad  we  had  inherited  from 
Alediaevalism,  but  of  that  which  came  upon  us 
through  the  triumph  of  the  vanquisher  of  Medi- 
evalism. 

And  the  schools  forget  all  this:  nothing  is  told  of 
the  great  epoch  of  Christian  civilization,  nothing 
of  the  art  it  brought  into  the  world.  It  is  as 
though  we  were  Latin  of  blood  and  polytheistic 
of  faith;  exiles  from  Mother  Rome,  hunted  wor- 
shippers of  Jove  and  Venus  and  Pan;  hating 
Christ,  hiding  through  the  deep  night  of  His 
ephemeral  reign,  emerging  at  last  into  the  new 
light  of  rejuvenescent  paganism.  And  when  this 
light  dawns,  and  back  to  a  world  repentant  of  its 
Gothic  crudities  come  the  forms  of  Roman  art, 
then  the  tale  is  taken  up  afresh,  as  though  Chris- 
tianity were  not,  and  from  Rome  we  pass  without 
a  break  to  the  Roman  Renaissance,  and  here  we 
are  fixed  upon  the  only  standard  and  eternal 
types.  Even  the  pale  purity  of  Greece  is  forgotten, 
the  burly  building  of  Rome,  and  from  now  on, 
emancipated  from  all  tests  of  absolute  beauty, 
33^ 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

relieved  from  all  the  hampering  dogmas  of  sound 
construction,  development  of  design  and  logic  of 
materials,  we  settle  down  on  the  facile  foundation 
of  prescribed  and  conventional  forms,  into  the 
judgment  of  which  enters  no  uneasy  question  of 
beauty  of  design;  which  is  established  on  the  laws 
of  scene  painting,  and  is  marked  by  a  lofty  superi- 
ority to  the  limitation  of  materials,  since  paint 
and  plaster,  tie  rods  and  clamps  and  chains  are,  as 
everyone  knows,  an  ever  present  help  in  time  of 
structural  trouble. 

And  then,  last  phase  of  all,  we  turn  to  France 
(being  uneasy  in  our  minds  on  certain  points  of 
reason  and  common  sense)  to  find  how  we  can 
escape  from  the  manifold  falsities  and  subterfuges 
and  pretences  of  this  style  which  has  been  given 
us  as  the  true  basis  of  our  study,  and  France, 
always  logical  at  any  cost,  and  unable  to  accept 
the  shams  and  the  scene  painting  and  the  calmly 
unchangeable  forms,  shows  us  the  path.  But 
there  is  one  thing  the  modern  Gallic  mind  cannot 
accept  under  any  circumstances,  and  that  is  Chris- 
337 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

tianity.  And  so,  faulted  for  once  in  her  logic, 
instead  of  going  back  to  her  own  greatest  epoch, 
her  own  greatest  art,  and  accepting  the  pure  reason 
and  logic  and  science  and  good  sense  of  Gothic, 
she  strives  to  transmogrify  the  artificialities  of  the 
Roman  Renaissance,  substitute  for  its  ugly  forms 
something  new  and  presumably  more  beautiful. 
Her  success  is  considerable,  in  view  of  the  almost 
insuperable  difficulties,  and  we  are  right  in  giving 
her  honour  for  whatever  she  achieves;  but  her 
course  is  unscientific,  for  she  imposes  on  herself  a 
quite  unnecessary  task;  the  game  is  amusing  and 
ingenious,  but  the  labour  unnecessary',  for  the  work 
was  done  before,  and  perfectly,  by  her  ancestors 
of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  there  is  something  singularly 
illogical  in  all  this,  something  too  closely  suggest- 
ive of  the  superficial  methods  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  inconsistent  with  the  broader  and 
deeper  views  that  have  begun  to  develop  since  that 
century  came  to  its  close.  Just  here  lies  the  point: 
the  schools  are  not  to  be  condemned  for  following 
33^ 


ARCHITECTURAL    EDUCATION 

a  course  out  of  touch  with  the  time  spirit  that  saw 
their  birth;  instead  they  should  be  criticised  in 
calm  and  even  temper  for  lagging  a  little  behind 
the  new  movement  that  is  bound  to  transform  the 
entire  spirit  of  the  age.  In  the  nineteenth  century 
no  other  course  than  the  one  they  followed  was 
possible;  education,  taking  its  colour  inevitably 
from  the  time,  became  both  materialistic  and 
technical.  The  theory  that  an  ethical  system 
could  best  be  established  on,  and  communicated 
from,  a  non-religious  basis,  that  spiritual  signifi- 
cancies  were  unimportant  and  unworthy  the 
attention  of  scientific  pedagogy,  that  the  true 
function  of  education  was  in  specialization,  in  the 
communicating  of  minute  technical  knowledge  in 
some  one  of  an  infinite  number  of  categories,  — 
all  this,  which  followed  directly  from  the  general 
scheme  of  things  established  by  the  Renaissance 
—  Reformation  —  Revolution,  brought  into  being 
a  system  from  which  of  necessity  dogmatic  and 
mystic  religion  was  banished,  with  all  it  could 
possibly  connote;  technical  training  took  the  place 
339 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

of  broad  culture  as  the  true  function  of  the  schools 
and  colleges  and  universities;  the  "elective  system" 
became  currently  popular,  and  as  a  result  the  old 
idea  of  an  university  faded  away,  and  august  and 
distinguished  colleges  took  on  the  aspect  of  the 
useful  but  wholly  special  "  Polytechnical  Institute." 
That  the  latter  is  a  distinct  necessity  is  entirely 
true,  but  it  by  no  means  takes  the  place  of  the  true 
university,  and  by  just  so  far  as  the  latter  takes  on 
the  qualities  of  the  technical  school,  losing  in  the 
process  something  of  its  university  aspect,  it 
destroys  the  balance  of  education,  leaving  it 
narrow,  material,  and  inadequate. 

Such  was,  however,  the  temper  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  schools  of 
architecture  should  have  followed  in  the  wake  of 
the  dignified  universities;  the  point  is,  however, 
that  the  time  has  come  for  a  clearer  and  wider 
view.  The  elective  system  will  disappear  from 
the  university  training,  carrying  with  it  the  schools 
of  dentistrv  and  veterinary  surgery  and  electrical 
science,  which  will  revert  to  their  just  place  in  the 
340 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

technological  schools:  and  back  to  its  former 
place  will  come  the  idea  of  the  abstract  value  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  things;  for  the  scientific 
method  is  changing;  its  singular  dominance  in  the 
last  century  is  being  curbed  by  the  new  psychology 
and  the  new  philosophy  of  which  Prof.  William 
James  is  so  lucid  an  interpreter:  the  day  of  ma- 
terialism is  over,  the  old  pseudo-scientific  test  of 
material  demonstration  is  already  discredited, 
the  vast  import  and  the  rational  acceptability  of 
spiritual  experience  is  on  the  way  to  full  accept- 
ance, and  with  its  triumph  a  new  epoch  will  dawn 
on  the  world  of  men. 

And  the  application  of  all  this  to  the  matter  of 
architectural  education  lies  just  here;  we  shall 
come  to  realize,  as  did  our  Greek  and  Byzantine 
and  mediaeval  forbears,  that  the  primary  tests 
of  art,  whatever  its  special  form,  are  beauty  and 
expression,  not  tradition  and  predilection:  we  shall 
accept  an  architectural  school,  not  as  a  place  where 
a  green  youth  goes  to  cloak  the  rawness  that  still 
endures  with  the  easy  garments  of  thin,  technical 
341 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

skill,  but  as  the  seat  of  a  prescribed  system  of 
spiritual  and  intellectual  and  physical  training, 
determined  by  the  combination  of  past  experience 
and  the  wisdom  of  men  already  trained  most 
broadly  and  comprehensively:  finally,  'we  shall 
understand  —  though  the  time  for  this  is  far  away 
perhaps,  —  that  the  artist,  be  he  architect,  painter, 
sculptor,  poet,  or  musician,  is  in  his  highest  estate 
neither  a  professional  entertainer  nor  a  tradesman, 
but  an  interpreter  of  spiritual  things,  and  that  he 
must  be  schooled  and  curbed  and  developed  with 
the  subtlety,  the  breadth,  and  the  comprehensive- 
ness that  are  brought  into  play,  for  example,  in 
the  making  of  a  priest.  For  the  artist  is  indeed  a 
consecrated  member  of  a  great  and  wonderful 
priesthood,  his"  ministery  is  the  sacred  ministry  of 
art,  and  his  function  not  the  veiling  of  bare  neces- 
sity with  a  pleasant  vesture,  but  the  interpretation 
and  voicing  of  emotions  and  ideas  too  high  and 
too  tenuous  for  other  modes  of  human  expression. 
A  true  school  of  architecture  should  be  half 
college  and  half  monastery,  set  in  the  midst  of 
342 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

beautiful  surroundings  and  beautiful  in  itself. 
Rule  and  order  and  implicit  obedience  should  be 
the  primary  essentials,  relaxing  slowly  as  the  lesson 
is  learned  until  at  the  end  liberty  and  the  freedom 
of  personal  development  come  as  the  reward  of 
faithful  service.  So  far  as  possible  every  other 
art  should  exert  its  influence;  painting  and  sculp- 
ture and  music  and  ceremonial.  The  instinct  for 
beauty,  long  lost,  must  be  built  up  again,  and  this 
can  come  only  through  an  environment  of  beauty, 
the  indirect  influence  of  spiritual  and  intellectual 
experience,  and  the  direct  influence  of  those  men 
who  by  the  mercy  of  God  or  through  their  own 
faithful  efforts  have  obtained  for  themselves  this 
power  of  testing  and  of  creating,  which  should  be 
the  heritage  of  all,  but  is  not. 

For  my  own  part,  I  cannot  conceive  of  an 
adequate  training  in  art  which  does  not  involve 
the  element  of  worship,  made  visible  through  the 
great  fine-art  of  religious  ceremonial.  All  good 
art  in  the  past  has  developed  from  organized 
religion,  whether  this  were  pagan  or  Buddhist  or 
343 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

Catholic,  and  the  results  of  the  efforts  of  the  last 
three  centuries  to  found  art  on  some  other  basis, 
have  not  met  with  a  degree  of  success  that  is  notably 
encouraging.  But  with  the  art  instinct  went  the 
religious  instinct, — or  vice  versa, — and  though 
we  are  no  longer  ashamed  to  confess  our  hunger- 
ing desire  for  beauty  and  art,  we  are  ashamed  to 
admit  the  equally  natural  craving  for  religion. 
It  will  take  generations  to  beat  down  the  accumu- 
lated prejudices  and  superstitions  of  rationalism 
and  infidelity,  but  the  work  has  already  begun, 
and  the  brazen  idols  of  the  nineteenth  century 
topple  on  their  unstable  pedestals.  The  two 
things  are  working  together,  interacting  and  inter- 
penetrating :  every  step  we  make  towards  a  restora- 
tion of  art  to  its  place  in  life  leads  us  nearer  the 
religious  goal,  and  every  step  we  take  away  from 
irreligion  leads  us  nearer  the  goal  of  art.  The  two 
are  inseparable,  but  confession  of  this  is  not  to  be 
thought  of  now,  and  so  for  the  time,  while  amal- 
gamation is  possible  and  imperative  from  the 
standpoint  of  religion,  it  is  not  so  from  that  of  art, 
344 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

and  the  two  must  be  severed,  the  approximation 
being  left  to  time  and  development  and  the  impulse 
of  the  individual  soul. 

Dealing  then  only  with  possibilities,  let  us  find 
if  possible  at  least  a  measure  of  amusement  in 
blocking  out  a  revised,  or  rather  modified,  scheme 
of  architectural  education,  taking  for  the  purpose 
a  four  years'  course  in  a  school  of  architecture. 
Before  doing  so,  however,  let  us  say  that  such  a 
course  would  be  incomplete,  and  inevitably  to  be 
supplemented  by  a  post-graduate  course  in  the 
great  and  final  school  that  some  day  must  arise 
in  the  capitol  city  of  the  nation.  Let  us  also 
admit  that  against  a  certain  amount  of  specializa- 
tion it  would  be  useless  and  undesirable  to  con- 
tend. As  matters  now  stand,  and  the  condition  is 
probably  wholesome,  a  certain  division  must  exist 
between  the  artist  and  his  alter  ego,  the  con- 
structor. It  is  too  much  to  ask  that  one  small 
personality  should  master  both  so  long  as  we  con- 
tinue rivalling  the  builders  of  Babel,  and  so  long 
as  the  element  of  aesthetic  joy  is  eliminated  from 
345 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

humanity  as  a  whole,  rendering  the  building 
contractor  and  the  artisan  and  the  workman  a 
kind  of  barbarian,  incapable  of  initiative,  unsus- 
ceptible of  other  than  sheer  mechanical  respon- 
sibility. 

This  being  so,  we  may  admit  that  training 
should  be  divided  in  its  nature;  for  one  man  a 
maximum  of  aesthetic  education,  with  a  definite 
minimum  of  that  which  is  structural,  for  the  other 
a  maximum  of  structural  training  with  an  equally 
definite  and  irreducible  minimum  of  the  artistic. 
For  the  latter  the  education  is  more  nearly  that  of 
the  technical  school,  and  we  need  not  consider 
it  here,  except  indirectly,  confining  ourselves  to 
the  case  of  the  student  who  aims  at  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  best  civilization  of  his  time,  through 
the  application  of  the  principles  of  organized 
beauty  to  the  material  problems  with  which  he 
deals.  What  should  we  postulate  of  the  scholastic 
system  which  would  best  achieve  the  desired  ends  ? 

In  the  first  place,  assuming  as  a  prerequisite  of 
matriculation  a  working  knowledge  of  Latin, 
346 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

French  or  German,  general  history,  descriptive 
geometry  and  algebra,  there  would  begin,  with  the 
first  year,  the  building  up  of  the  solid  foundation 
of  general  culture  that  is  indispensable.  This 
would  consist  in  the  comparative  history  of  Euro- 
pean civilization;  classical,  mediaeval,  Renaissance 
and  modern  literature;  the  history  and  rationale 
of  the  allied  arts  of  sculpture,  painting,  music, 
the  drama  and  poetry;  the  theory,  significance,  and 
standards  of  art  as  beauty  and  as  language.  These 
things  would  be  so  arranged  in  point  of  time  that 
their  several  aspects  would  synchronize  with  the 
history  and  practice  of  architectural  styles,  —  a 
different  matter  to  the  practice  of  design,  of  which 
I  shall  speak  later.  This  historical  and  theoretical 
study  of  style  would  begin  at  once  with  Egyptian, 
Assyrian  and  Persian  which  would  occuy  the 
first  half  of  the  first  year.  With  the  second  half 
would  begin  the  study  of  Greek,  which  would 
continue  a  full  year,  Roman  overlapping  by  one 
quarter,  and  continuing  to  the  end  of  the  second 
year,  being  overlapped  in  its  turn  by  the  Transi- 
347 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

tion  —  Byzantine,  Norman,  Lombard  —  which 
would  continue  through  the  first  quarter  of  the 
third  year,  the  study  and  practice  of  Christian 
architecture  beginning  with  the  third  year,  and 
continuing  to  the  end,  the  fourth  year  being  given 
to  the  architecture  of  the  Renaissance  and  modem 
times. 

Meanwhile,  the  practice  of  design  would  be 
largely  eliminated,  the  practice  work  in  the  sev- 
eral styles  taking  its  place  until  the  beginning  of 
the  third  year,  when  actual  work  would  commence 
in  an  atelier  under  the  personal  inspiration  and 
instruction  of  some  practising  architect.  This 
atelier  work  would  continue  until  the  middle  of 
the  fourth  year,  when  the  student  would  devote 
himself  to  his  thesis  design,  and  work  at  this  until 
graduation.  In  addition  to  practice  work  in  the 
several  styles,  and  the  work  in  an  atelier,  there 
should  be  a  course  which  might  be  called  "The 
Rationale  of  Architecture,"  which  would  begin 
with  the  second  year:  this  would  be  a  course  in 
aixhitectural  biology,  and  would  aim  to  teach  the 
348 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

development  and  co-ordination  of  an  architectural 
entity,  and  it  would  show  the  relations  which  exist 
between  function,  plan,  materials,  racial  temper, 
and  climatic  conditions,  in  the  end  becoming  cen- 
tralized about  the  questions  of  planning  and  the 
development  of  mass,  composition,  and  design, 
merging  into,  or  running  parallel  with,  the  fourth 
year's  work  in  pure  design.  This  course  would 
provide  the  "definite  minimum"  of  structural 
education  of  which  I  have  spoken  above,  as  well  as 
that  training  in  the  art  of  planning,  on  the  import- 
ance of  which  such  stress  is  justly  laid  by  Paris 
and  by  all  our  American  schools. 

In  addition  to  some  such  general  programme  as 
this,  which  should  be  obligatory,  would  be  many 
subjects  which  should,  I  think,  be  optional,  or 
contingent  upon  the  possible  inefficiency  of  each 
student.  Latin,  French,  and  German,  English 
composition,  mathematics,  natural  sciences:  these 
would  form  a  body  of  electives  or  a  series  of  alter- 
nates from  amongst  which  one  or  more  would  be 
chosen  by  the  student,  because  of  personal  in- 
349 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

cliiiation,  or  required  by  the  school  for  the  purpose 
of  remedying  deficiencies  or  developing  certain 
weak  points  that  might  appear,  but  they  would 
always  be  held  as  special  possibilities,  as  a  kind  of 
"army  reserves,"  to  be  called  on  in  case  of  neces- 
sity. 

Here  is  a  rough  outHne,  offered,  not  as  a  care- 
fully considered,  definite,  or  even  possible  plan 
but  simply  for  the  purpose  of  calling  attention  to 
certain  schemes  of  possibly  desirable  modification, 
and  to  certain  definite  methods  whereby  amend- 
ments might  be  accomplished.  To  establish  a 
system  of  fixed  and  obligatory  training  that  should 
modulate  during  the  last  year  into  the  liberty  that 
should  characterize  the  Post-Graduate  School;  to 
set  up  as  the  chief  aim  of  this  scholastic  work  the 
development  of  the  culture  and  enlightenment 
and  broad  sympathy  that  mark  the  gentleman, 
as  a  prerequisite  to  technical  training,  to  be  ac- 
quired through  personal  association  with  prac- 
tising architects;  to  restore  Christian  art  to  its 
rightful  position,  and  generally  to  establish  a 
350 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

broader  view  of  the  comparative  excellence  of  the 
several  architectural  styles,  relegating  the  Roman 
Renaissance  to  the  position  it  can  claim  on  its 
merits  alone;  to  obtain  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
design  as  such,  and  as  differentiated  from  prac- 
tice work  in  the  diflferent  styles,  can  only  be  taught, 
except  so  far  as  its  rudiments  are  concerned,  by 
practising  architects  through  the  atelier  system:  — 
these  are  the  principles  involved. 

The  method,  roughly  indicated  above,  contem- 
plates a  general  co-ordination  of  all  studies,  so 
that  an  historical  and  theoretical  parallelism 
would  continue  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
For  example,  in  the  first  year,  the  student,  after  a 
brief  survey  of  Egyptian  architecture  and  its  allies, 
would  pass  at  once  to  the  study  of  Greek  archi- 
tecture, taking  up  at  the  same  time  Greek  sculpture, 
the  beginnings  of  classical  civilization  and  classical 
literature,  comparative  civilization,  the  rudiments 
of  art  theory,  the  elements  of  design  and  the 
primary  principles  of  architectural  biology.  The 
study  of  Greek  architecture  would  continue  a  full 
351 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

year,  carrying  with  it  its  educational  concomitants 
as  above,  adding  the  classical  drama  and  begin- 
ning with  the  elements  of  architectural  rendering. 
Practice  work  in  archaeological  design  would  begin 
with  the  second  year,  the  work  being  confined  to 
Greek  orders  for  the  first  half,  then  changing  to 
those  of  Rome  as  this  epoch  was  taken  up.  With 
the  Roman  period  the  study  of  history,  art  theory, 
comparative  civilization,  literature,  and  archi- 
tectural biology  would  take  its  colour,  of  course, 
from  the  epoch  then  under  consideration. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  second  year  the  field 
would  change  to  the  epoch  of  the  Transition, 
carrying  with  it  a  corresponding  change  in 
the  allied  studies,  and  at  this  time  would  begin 
the  study  of  the  ,  elements  of  Christian  civili- 
zation and  the  development  of  ecclesiasticism, 
secular  and  monastic.  With  the  third  year 
would  begin  the  consideration  of  Gothic, 
which  would  continue  into  the  first  quarter  of  the 
fourth  year,  overlapping  by  so  much  the  epoch  of 
the  Renaissance,  which  would  be  taken  up  at  the 
352 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

start  of  this  last  year.  In  addition  to  the  other 
co-ordinate  studies,  which  would  take  their  colour 
entirely  from  mediaeval  civilization,  would  be 
added  a  course  in  English  history  and  civilization, 
and  with  the  mid-year  would  begin  the  atelier 
work  in  actual  design,  which  would  continue  until 
graduation.  During  this  year  great  stress  would 
naturally  be  laid  on  the  history  and  theological 
development  of  the  Church  in  its  bearings  on 
civilization,  and  the  liturgies  and  ceremonials  of 
the  mediaeval  Church  would  be  studied  as  having  a 
determining  influence  on  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  Christian  architecture. 

With  the  fourth  year  the  period  of  the  Renais- 
sance would  be  taken  up,  and  its  consideration 
continued  during  the  year,  all  the  other  studies 
bearing  it  company,  and,  of  course,  finding  their 
subject-matter  in  the  records  of  the  time.  The 
last  half  of  this  year  would,  in  design,  be  devoted 
to  some  problem  in  pure  architecture,  worked  out 
en  loge  and,  with  an  essay  on  a  subject  intimately 
associated  with  the  style  and  subject  of  the  thesis 
353 


THE    GOTHIC    QUEST 

design  itself,  form  the  test  work  for  the  student 
for  the  entire  course. 

Again,  I  repeat,  all  this  is  not  offered  as  a  mature 
project,  but  simply  as  an  essay  in  empirical  sug- 
gestion. That  architecture  is,  in  a  sense,  the 
noblest  of  the  arts,  is  the  only  definite  assumption 
I  desire  to  make,  but  believing  this,  and  holding 
firmly  that,  with  all  the  arts,  it  is  beauty  and  lan- 
guage first  and  always,  or  it  is  nothing,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  the  problem  of  architectural 
education  is  one  of  grave  import,  bound  up  in- 
dissolubly  with  the  question  of  civilization  itself, 
and  that  it  demands,  therefore,  the  eager  sympathy 
of  every  architect  and  the  friendly  co-operation 
towards  its  final  perfection,  of  every  professor  of 
architecture.  To  the  latter,  both  living  and  dead, 
the  profession  owes  more  than  it  can  ever  repay: 
it  desires  to  add  to  this  debt,  and  in  no  way  could 
this  be  more  easily  accomplished  than  by  such 
action  on  the  part  of  the  schools  as  would  establish 
general  culture  as  their  primal  aim,  admit  archi- 
tectural biology  as  a  recognized  study,  hand  over 
354 


ARCHITECTURAL   EDUCATION 

the  teaching  of  pure  design  to  the  architect  in  his 
atelier,  proclaim  the  test  of  style  and  design  to  be 
above  all  else  pure  beauty  and  perfect  language, 
relegate  the  artificialities  of  the  Roman  Renais- 
sance to  their  proper  place,  and  finally  accept 
Christianity  as  a  fact,  and  ;Gothic  as  the  most 
highly  organized,  the  most  significant  and  ex- 
pressive, and  the  most  beautiful  form  of  archi- 
tecture that  man  has  ever  evolved^ 


Eau0  ^to 


355 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

The  several  essays  and  lectures  which  make 
up  the  foregoing  volume  first  appeared  in  the 
places  and  on  the  dates  noted  below  : 

1.  On  the  Restoration  of  Idealism.      The 

Knight  Errant,  1893. 

2.  Concerning    Architectural    Style.      The 

Architectural  Review  (Boston),  1905. 

3.  The     Gothic    Ascendency.      A    lecture 

first  delivered  in  1904,  and  printed  in 
the  Inland  Architect  in  1907. 

4.  Meeting-Houses  or  Churches.     A  lecture 

first  delivered  in  1894,  and  printed  in 
Modern  Art,  1895. 

5.  The  Development  of  Ecclesiastical  Archi- 

tecture in  England.    The  Brickbuilder, 

1905. 

357 


358  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

6.  The  Development  of  Ecclesiastical  Archi- 

tecture in  America.    The  Brickbuilder, 
1905. 

7.  On  the  Building  of  Churches.      A  lecture 

first  dehvered  in  1900. 

8.  The   Interior   Decoration   of   Churches. 

A  lecture  first  dehvered  in  1903. 

9.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  and  Art. 

The  Catholic  World,  1894. 

10.  One  of  the  Lost  Arts.      1907. 

11.  The  Case  against  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 

Arts.      A   lecture    first    delivered    in 
1896. 

12.  Architectural  Education    in  the   United 

States.      The  Magazine  of  Christian 
Art,  1907. 


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